Is anything sadder than a train
That leaves when it’s supposed to,
That has only one voice,
Only one route?
There’s nothing sadder.<p> Except perhaps a cart horse,
Shut between two shafts
And unable even to look sideways.

[Expressing a liking for trains] Folks can't rush you until you get off.

Am I in the wrong place here, or in the wrong life? Did I not recognize, as I sat in a train that raced past a station and did not stop, that I was on the wrong train, and did I not learn from the conductor that the train would not stop at the next station, either, a hundred kilometers away, and did he not also admit to me, whispering with his hand shielding his mouth, that the train would not stop again at all?

If a train doesn't stop at your station, then it's not your train.

You can't be neutral on a moving train.

Hourly reports are received by telegraph, giving the position of all the passenger and the principal freight trains. In all cases where passenger trains are more than ten minutes, or freight trains more than half-an-hour behind time, on their arrival at a station the conductors are required to report the cause to the operator, who transmits the same by telegraph to the General Superintendent; and the information being entered as fast as received, on a convenient tabular form, shows, at a glance, the position and progress of trains, in both directions, on every Division of the Road.

[about public transport] It's unbelievable. People are so desperate to get home. The trains come very regularly, you see them, one minute, two minutes, three minutes... this means nothing to people. As soon as you get on the platform it's a level playing field. I don't care when you arrived, I'm getting on this train.

He seemed to lose interest in the subject of his daughter, glooming at a yellow card of ancient railway regulations on the wall. But when the harbingers of the coming train were audible – porters trundling, a scrambled gabble from the station announcer, frantic blowing on hot tea – he became eager again and was out swiftly on to the platform. I followed him. The train slid in. I saw the driver look down disdainful from his cosy hell, sharing – like soldier and auxiliary – a mystique with the tea-room woman. Passengers, disillusioned with arrival, got out greyly amid grey steam; passengers, hungry for the illusion of getting somewhere, jostled their way on.

When the time-table is so arranged as to call for speed nearly equal to the full capacity of the engine, it is very obvious that the risks of failure in making time, must be much greater than at reduced rates, and when they do occur, the efforts made to gain time must be correspondingly greater and uncertain. A train whose prescribed rate of speed is thirty miles per hour, having lost five minutes of time, and being required to gain it, in order to meet and pass an opposing train at a station ten miles distant, must necessarily increase its speed to forty miles an hour; and a train whose rate of speed is 40 miles per hour, under similar circumstances, must increase its speed to 60 miles per hour.

Later in the evening when the sun is sinking low All day I been waiting for the whistle to blow Sitting in a teepee built right on the tracks Rolling them bones until the foreman comes back Pick up you belongings boys and scatter about We've got an off-schedule train comin' two miles out

Displaced Person’s Song

If you see a train this evening,
Far away, against the sky,
Lie down in your woolen blanket,
Sleep and let the train go by.

Trains have called us, every midnight,
From a thousand miles away,
Trains that pass through empty cities,
Trains that have no place to stay.

No one drives the locomotive,
No one tends the staring light,
Trains have never needed riders,
Trains belong to bitter night.

Railway stations stand deserted,
Rights-of-way lie clear and cold,
What we left them, trains inherit,
Trains go on, and we grow old.

Let them cry like cheated lovers,
Let their cries find only wind,
Trains are meant for night and ruin,
And we are meant for song and sin.

"Travel"

The railroad track is miles away,
And the day is loud with voices speaking,
Yet there isn’t a train goes by all day
But I hear its whistle shrieking.

All night there isn’t a train goes by,
Though the night is still for sleep and dreaming,
But I see its cinders red on the sky,
And hear its engine steaming.

My heart is warm with friends I make,
And better friends I’ll not be knowing;
Yet there isn’t a train I wouldn’t take,
No matter where it’s going.

[T]he train system is so chronic now, that any journey you undertake by train in Britain is identical to the one taken by Omar Sharif in Doctor Zhivago; that's what it's like - the same drama and misery. Ancient, knackered rolling-stock limping painfully across the land, shuddering to a halt for no apparent reason, with the lights flickering on and off; everyone running up and down - 'What's going on? What's up ahead? I don't know... Is it Rod Steiger with the White Guard?' - desperate women in headscarves running alongside the carriages, throwing their babies into the train, shouting 'I'LL NEVER SEE PURLEY OAKS, BUT MY CHILD MIGHT!'

It is necessary to ensure the accelerated development of roads. We have a vast territory and the possibility to move people and goods quickly across it is a guarantee for the economy’s success. Trains should move at a speed of 400km/h similar to what has long been in place in China and Japan.