First to respond was our webmaster, Bruce Perdue, and he had the correct answer.: The song "City of New Orleans". The line is "the train pulls out of Kankakee." Howard Berlin knew this one, too. Other readers filled in more details.

Tom DeLorey writes:

Pablo Hoffman writes:

John Dannreuther writes:

John gets extra credit for knowing the songwriter. He knew the answer to that question of course, as did Bill Eckberg, who writes:

Goodman's tune was an instant classic - pure poetry, even for people who wouldn't be caught dead reading a poem.Other artists have covered it, too.Jerry Schaeper writes:

Dave Schenkman writes:

From folkblues.com:

That site has the original Steve Goodman lyrics:City of New Orleans(www.folkblues.com/goodman/cono.htm)

Here's a link to the Arlo Guthrie lyrics:Arlo Guthrie - The City Of New Orleans Lyrics(www.lyricsfreak.com/a/arlo+guthrie/city+of+new+orleans_20178738.html)

John Mutch provided the following YouTube link and commented:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfxoM6trtZE

Regarding Steve Goodman, Bill Eckberg adds:

If she'd been run over by a reindeer it could've been a Christmas song, too.Thanks for playing, everyone!

Maybe there's a numismatic connection after all. How about... ?
"Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point, ain't no one keepin' score"

I would encourage our younger readers (many of whom weren't even BORN yet in 1972) to get a copy of the Guthrie version from iTunes - I think the studio version is better than the live video.

There are many great lines in this song, and one that resonates with me is:
"And the sons of Pullman Porters, and the sons of Engineers
Ride their father's magic carpets made of steel"

The railroads were the result of a generation's labor and ingenuity. They brought the nation together, and spawned the modern corporation, standard time zones, and more. But by 1972 passenger service had dwindled to a shadow of its former self. Even its replacement, the passenger car, was getting long in the tooth, as signified by "the graveyards of the rusted automobile."

The railroads were made efficient through the use of another invention, the telegraph. To me, Morse's telegraph is the magic carpet we're all riding today. Its dots and dashes were the digital system of its day, and the first transatlantic telegraph cables were the world's original Internet. The telephone system was a diversion into the analog world, but today we're back to digital and connected in more ways than could ever have been imagined. Text, voice, sound and sight are all carried effortlessly along today's digital pipes. Fiber optic cables snake thorough the same underground Manhattan vaults that once held telegraph cables; this issue of The E-Sylum may travel to our London readers along the same Nova Scotia to Dublin route of the first telegraph cable.

The E-Sylum is getting a little long in the tooth itself. We have more users than ever thankfully, but dialup modems and desktop computers are already in the dustbin of technology history. Facebook, Twittter and a thousand smartphone apps are replacing email. But old technology rarely goes away completely - it just adapts to its niche and carries on. The City of New Orleans is still making that southbound odyssey, and The E-Sylum is still here. If we've been made obsolete, I guess we "still ain't heard the news."

To read the earlier E-Sylum article, see:NOTES FROM E-SYLUM READERS: DECEMBER 22, 2013 : Bob Leuver on The E-Sylum, Bitcoins, and Jesse Owens(www.coinbooks.org/esylum_v16n52a08.html)