“The romance of the rails lingers in America’s heart, although the railroad train has lost its popularity to the Johnny-come-lately automobile and upstart airplane.  Ah, but there was a time when faraway steam whistles sang their forlorn song across prairie, mountain pass and field as trains chugged coast to coast, binding ever closer our union.  Mile-long freights (always with a red caboose) and sleek silver passenger Pullmans alike left signature trails of billowing coal smoke.  Locomotives were marvels of wheels, boilers, pipes and cowcatchers, live white steam clouds, bells and whistles, black cast iron and shiny brass.  They were monsters of power and speed as they stormed by on parallel ribbons of steel.  Their names were as romantic as ballads: Chesapeake & Ohio, Burlington Northern, Wabash, Lackawanna, Penn Central, Southern Pacific, Chicago & Northwestern, Norfolk & Western, Allegheny, Seaboard Coast Line, Baltimore & Ohio, Lehigh Valley, and the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul & Pacific.  All emblazoned with individual logos on yellow, brown or rust-colored wooden freight cars.  Remember I’ve Been Working On The Railroad, The Atchison, Topeka And The Santa Fe, Casey Jones, John Henry and The Gandy Dancer’s Ball?  Now there are diesel locomotives, flat cars piled with truck rigs.  Horns instead of steam whistles.  Gone is the aromatic magic and the chuffa-chuffa of the Iron Horse.  One hopes recording technology has captured the diminishing, plaintive wail, the whooo-whooo-whooooooo, of a distant train lumbering along its lonely way.  And why does Amtrak lack the poetry of Union Pacific?” (Published by Scott Arts Graphics)