Nightlighters Dance: All Aboard

Did You Know? - A conductor (UK: guard) is a railway train crew member responsible for operational and safety duties that do not involve actual operation of the train. The conductor title is most common in North American railway operations, but the role is common worldwide under various job titles. Conductor job responsibilities typically include:

Making sure the train stays on schedule

Ensuring that any cars and cargo are picked up and dropped off properly

Completing en-route paperwork

Ensuring the train follows applicable safety rules and practices

Controlling the train's movement while operating in reverse

Coupling or uncoupling cars

Assisting with setting out or picking up of rolling stock

Carrying out running repairs

Ticket collection and other customer service duties

Opening and closing train doors

A Delima - Trains travel from one town to another town all day, always on the same track, always going nonstop and at the same speed. The noon train took 80 minutes to complete the trip, but the 4 PM train took an hour and 20 minutes. Why?

80 minutes is an hour and twenty minutes!

Did You Know? - A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line.

Did You Know? - Gandy dancer is a slang term used for early railroad workers who laid and maintained railroad tracks in the years before the work was done by machines. The British equivalents of the term gandy dancer are "navvy" (from "navigator"), originally builders of canals or "inland navigations", for builders of railway lines, and "platelayer" for workers employed to inspect and maintain the track. In the U.S. Southwest and Mexico, Mexican and Mexican-American track workers were colloquially "traqueros".

In some texts, the term is described as specific to those workers who built the track. One text states that "layers of railroad track are hardly ever called gandy dancers," asserting, rather, that the job of the gandy dancer refers to "track examiners", ascribing their responsibilities as "checking ties, bolts, track, and roadbed for necessary repairs." However, most sources refer to gandy dancers as the men who did the difficult physical work of track maintenance under the direction of an overseer.

There are various theories about the derivation of the term, but most refer to the "dancing" movements of the workers using a specially manufactured 5-foot (1.52 m) "lining" bar (which may have come to be called a "gandy") as a lever to keep the tracks in alignment.

Did You Know?

Q: What do you call a train that eats toffee?
A: A chew, chew train.

Q: Why is the railroad angry?
A: Because people are always crossing it!

Q: Why can't the engineer be electrocuted?
A: Because he's not a conductor!

Q: Why can't a steam locomotive sit down?
A: Because it has a tender behind

Did You Know? - "The Loco-Motion" is a 1962 pop song written by American songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King. The song is notable for appearing in the American Top 5 three times – each time in a different decade, performed by artists of three different ethnicities: originally African American pop singer Little Eva in 1962 (U.S. No. 1); then American band Grand Funk Railroad in 1974 (U.S. No. 1); and Australian singer Kylie Minogue in 1988 (U.S. No. 3).

The song is a popular and enduring example of the dance-song genre: much of the lyrics are devoted to a description of the dance itself, usually done as a type of line dance. However, the song came before the dance.

The original recording of the song was sung by Eva Boyd, under the stage name Little Eva. Boyd was actually Carole King's babysitter, having been introduced to King and husband Gerry Goffin by The Cookies, a local girl group who would also record for the songwriters. "The Loco-Motion" was the first release by the new Dimension Records company, whose releases were mostly penned and produced by Goffin and King.

A cover version of the song was recorded quickly by British girl group The Vernons Girls and scored the chart the same week as the Little Eva version. The Vernons Girls' version stalled at No. 47 in the UK, while the Little Eva version reached No. 2 on the UK charts. It re-entered the chart some ten years later and almost became a top ten again, peaking at No. 11.

In the United States, "The Loco-Motion" was the sixth most successful single of 1962 according to Billboard. It was also the third most successful single of 1962 in South Africa. In March 1965, Little Eva sang the song on the ABC-TV series Shindig!, and this is the only known video of her singing this song.

Song: Down By The Station

"Down By The Station" is a popular song written by Lee Ricks and Slim Gaillard in 1948, and most famously recorded by Tommy Dorsey. The song remains popular today as a children's music standard.

The opening lines of the song are: Down by the station, early in the morning, see the little pufferbellies all in a row.

Notable covers of the song include Barney, The Wiggles and The Four Preps, whose version was a big hit for them in 1960.

The song itself is much older than 1948; it has been seen in a 1931 Recreation magazine.

Whether deliberately copied or not, the tune is very closely related to the chorus of Alouette (song), a French/Canadian folk song.