HAVE THEY GONE? Does the train come to Charlottesville, Va.?
I didn't know but I overheard that a railroad passenger train runs though Staunton three times each week, so that accounts for three Charlottesville visits each week. It may be some north-south traffic is still being offered, so there would be a few more stopping a Charlottesville, Va. on eastern side of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Who knows what trains start or stop where these days?
More important, perhaps ---”who cares?”
Railroading lore has been been handed over to the RR Hobby people who seem to see a fairyland version of railroad's golden era. They have fabricated glorious tales of adventure and romance so it is often difficult to get a picture of what railroading was really like.
Being romanicists at heart, the “roadies” have long ago reached a point where they are relating a fine series of stories which have become a type of “historic fiction” in today's literary nomenclature. They tend to place emphasis on all of the many good things about rail travel of a prosperous era, and to diminish any qualities which may have proved to have been troublesome, costly and, at times, even unplesant.
The best preserved relics of the era can be seen today in our museums and theme parks and it is good they are being remembered in other art forms, as well. There is now an entire wing of Ameican folk music devoted to the railroad songs we have sung. One voicei among those who specialize in railroading songs is a folk singer by the name of Bill Haroff, Staunton, Virginia. He stands tall as a man who has captured and now holds the true feelings of the railroading times in his agile voice and fleeting fingers on guitar, mandolin and the old-time favorite among railroaders – the “five-stringed banjo.”
A.L.M. October 10, 2005 [322wds]
