Ghost Train Lyrics

Behind the last house on the cul-de-sac

A trail cuts through the woods

Where runners, hikers, bicycles

Escape their neighborhoods.

Raised and level, straight and true,

Goes both ways for several miles;

The pavement ends, the trail continues on.

 

CHORUS:

And sometimes I’m awakened

By a whistle before dawn,

Though the Narrow Gauge railroad

Is fifty-five years gone.

It always ran a little late,

So I guess I’m not surprised.

Now subdivision passengers,

On the railbed, exercise.

 

For profit, not adventure,

They met after the Civil War

To build and east-west line

From Fredericksburg to Orange.

In twenty years the PF&P

Was hauling wood past Parker’s Store

And passengers from town to dusty town.

 

Past wheat fields, piles of timber,

Sprouting corn and muddy roads,

Fifty years before the auto

Could carry farmer’s loads.

Skinny-dippers at Hazel Run

Under trestle as she goes by;

Only clothing in the bushes greets the eye.

 

CHORUS

 

Fourteen cars of lumber

And one that’s stockyard bound

Derailed near Alum Springs

Two miles from the town.

The cattle mooed through the night

‘Til the tracks could be repaired;

For another day their lives had been spared.

 

The children found a penny,

Wide and thin and green,

And a rusted bolt out in the brush,

A piece of a machine.

Forty miles of track and four steam trains

Sold for scrap in ’38;

The Narrow Gauge was finally out of date.

 

CHORUS

 

Well, it always ran a little late,

so I guess I’m not surprised.

It’s really hard to run on time

without the rails and ties.