Songfacts®:

• Al Stewart was born in Glasgow, lived in England most of his early life, then immigrated to California, and like most internationally acclaimed musicians has traveled a great deal, including in trains. This song is part autobiographical, part historical and part allegorical. He contrasts his own boyhood experience of trains - riding them to boarding school - with the expansion of the railways and the role they played in two World Wars taking troops to the front or prisoners to the Nazi concentration camps in Poland. He returns to his own experience of riding the Amtrak from New York to Philadelphia in comfort but, while others watch the world go by, all he can think of is the past and the at times terrible human suffering that has been associated with trains. >>>

  Suggestion credit:
  Alexander - London, England