“I hear the train a-comin’, rollin’ ’round the bend and I ain’t seen the sunshine since I don’t know when stuck in Folsom Prison, time keeps a draggin’ on, and the train keeps a rollin’ on down to San Antone.”

This is a song Johnny Cash made famous in 1955. He talks about a man in prison and every night he hears a train going by and listens to the lonesome whistle. He thinks of all the people who could be on the train and where they are headed.

I have always been fascinated by trains ever since I was small. The large, bellowing, chugging engines, the clack, clack, clack of the box cars rolling down the tracks and the loud whistle that could not help but bring a smile to my face.

I think back to the first time my love for trains started. In the small Midwest town where I grew up my grandparents’ land butted up again the Milwaukee Railroad tracks on the outskirts of our small town.

If we were visiting, we could see the train in the distance long before we heard it. The prairie is flat. We could see the black dot of the train for miles away.

The dot of the engine grew larger and larger and shook the ground as it got closer. The hissing of the steam and the clanging of a bell put excitement in my heart. And finally, the long whistle and the whoosh of steam signaled the train had pulled into the station. The trains that I remember only carried freight.

We lived 7 miles out of town and on nights when the wind was just right, and the farm was still I could hear the trains whistle far off in the distance. It always sounded like such a lonesome sound.

The trains had stopped running thorough our town before I even got in high school. No more passing through green fields of crops, chasing deer out from hiding and hauling freight. The countryside was left quiet, the rails were soon overgrown with grass and weeds. The sounds of rumbling trains and loud whistles were just a memory.

When I moved to Pennsylvania 50 years ago my dreams came true of hearing and seeing trains again. With the Zinc company in full swing, I could hear their whistles and the sounds of them going on the tracks in Palmerton. I never got tired of hearing them.

Now some years later we have one little train still running on the tracks. We hear the air-powered whistle blowing at crossings and echoing throughout our valley. It is a pleasant sound for me. I am usually having my first cup of coffee for the day when I hear it.

In its heyday these tracks of this last train carried passengers, sometimes as many as 200 from Kunkletown to Palmerton. People going to work or going on to connect with other railways in the valley. This continued till until 1935 when it turned to just freight service for the Zinc Company. This small part of the railway is still used today. This train is owned by the Chestnut Ridge railroad, a division of the American Zinc Recycling. It also services Airgas and Ampal Rail needs.

“I bet there’s rich folks eatin’ in a fancy dining car, They’re probably drinkin’ coffee and smokin’ big cigars.” The song goes on to say when they free him from the prison and if the railroad was his, he would move it far from the prison “And I’d let that lonesome whistle blow my blues away!” American singer songwriter, Johnny Cash (1932-2003).