Fifty years ago a lonely whistle –
Goodman’s ode to disappearing trains.
Arlo Guthrie covered his epistle
While passengers took off for cars and planes.

Those were our trains my friend, their existence threatened -
System derailed while Willie topped the charts,
A spate of bankruptcies – Pullman and then Pennsy
And Congress salvaged the remaining parts.
La la la la la la La la la la la la
Amtrak has salvaged the remaining parts.

Riding on the City of New Orleans.
Mississippi Central morning rail (1)
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors, twenty sacks of mail.

Along the odyssey, pull out at Kankakee
And roll along past houses, farms and fields
Past towns that have no names, freight yards full of old men
And graveyards of the rusted automobiles.
La la la la la la La la la la la la
The graveyards of the rusted automobiles.

Good morning America how are you?
Don't you know me I'm your native son,
The train they call The City of New Orleans -
I'll go five hundred miles ere day is done.

The towns and people seem part of a troubling dream
But the steel rails no longer have the blues
Conductors sing again, passengers please refrain -
This line makes profit hauling coal and crude.
La la la la la la La la la la la la
This line makes profit hauling coal and crude.

Twenty years ago, Illinois Central
Was bought out by our neighbor’s CNR (2)
Amtrak runs the intercity service
Ridership keeps creeping up so far.

Stations and riders seem like a non-profit scheme
Yet subsidies have solved Steve Goodman’s blues -
Rail’s bottom-line’s now great, its locomotive’s freight
Passenger service serves as the caboose.
La la la la la la La la la la la la
Passenger service serves as the caboose.

(1) The Mississippi Central, operating from Mississippi to Tennessee was absorbed into the Illinois Central system in 1878.
(2) Canadian National Railways