“Chug, chug chug, puff, puff, puff went the little blue engine.” In 1954, one year after steam engine #3751 pulled its last passenger train from Los Angeles to San Diego, author Watty Piper told children everywhere his tale of the little  engine that could triumph by dint of sheer determination. 

Yesterday, San Diegans braved the crowds of the Rock and Roll Marathon to greet engine #3751 as it chugged and puffed once again into the downtown depot – 55 years later and two hours overdue. Elderly men and women in wheel chairs joined kids in striped overalls and caps to greet the magnificent machine as it steamed into town in all its black, shiny glory, spouting enormous white clouds of wet steam, clanging its bell and blowing its whistle to announce its triumphant return. Everyone there, it seems, had a story – a grandfather rode behind engine #3751 when it chugged into San Diego on its final ride… a father remembers when… a husband or a wife has always been a train buff… a parent wants his kid to know… There were lots of stripes, lots of caps, and lots of stories.

For me… the train brought back memories. I never rode behind a steam engine (I'm not that old), but I did travel to New York from Los Angeles in 1962 on board the El Capitan, the all-coach car of the Santa Fe Super Chief. We rode the train, because my mom was afraid to fly. I remember the diner with its white tablecloths and fresh flowers, waking up that first morning to the blood-red landscape between Arizona and New Mexico, and crossing the Rocky Mountains through the Raton Pass into Colorado. I was only 12, but the experience is seared in my memory and is probably responsible for my love affair with train travel. Time passes slowly on the train because traveling at train speed is slow going. Trains actually slow down to climb long, steep, mountain grades. And passenger trains wait on sidings for fast freights with profitable cargo to blast by on the single set of rails. My brother and I played cards and read books and visited with the other kids. I still love looking out train windows and watching reunions when the train stops briefly at a station and passengers disembark. I think of the train as a silver tube of life with windows – people eating and talking and sleeping and playing in an insulated world that passes through cities and towns and lonesome landscapes without leaving a mark. Outside sounds stay outside. Sounds from inside the train are heard only by passengers. Once in awhile, if you happen to glance out the window and catch the eye of someone standing near the tracks, you might exchange waves. Then you're gone – or he is --  strangers whose lives have briefly touched.

The arrival of #3751 was bittersweet yesterday. Since it was borrowing real estate from Amtrak, there were many opportunities to compare the old engine to the Amtrak Surfliners that arrived and departed throughout the day. Mary Had a Little Lamb and Beethoven’s Ninth come to mind. The first has a certain charm, but the second has soul. Steam engines were “wrought,” as opposed to produced. It’s easy to imagine the pride of those engineers as they stoked the fire and maneuvered their powerful engines over the mountains and across the plains from East to West and back again. Steam engines really do go “chug, chug, chug,” and as we watched #3751 depart in the late afternoon, we heard the chug, chug, chugs become one uninterrupted essence of train sound as it picked up speed. The Amtrak’s anemic chirp was dwarfed by the mighty blast of the steam whistle, which resounded throughout downtown as the train rounded the bend and disappeared from the Santa Fe Depot… I really believe I heard it say, “I thought I could, I thought I could.”

This blog is dedicated to singer of train songs and storyteller Bruce (U Utah) Phillips, who  was probably along for the ride yesterday.  U Utah Phillips died last week at his home in Nevada.  I’m pretty sure he’d have a good story to tell.