For this week’s Song Lyric Sunday theme, Jim Adams has given us the topic of trains. There are a lot of songs about trains, and the one I chose is “City of New Orleans,” most notably recorded by Arlo Guthrie and written by Chicago singer-songwriter Steve Goodman.

Goodman wrote the lyrics for the song on a sketch pad after his wife fell asleep on the Illinois Central train, City of New Orleans, where they were going to visit his wife’s grandmother in New Orleans. Goodman wrote about what he saw looking out the windows of the train and playing cards in the club car. Everything in the song, he said, actually happened on the ride.

After he returned home, Goodman heard that the train was scheduled to be decommissioned due to lack of passengers. He was encouraged to use this song to save the train, so he retouched the lyrics and released it on his first album in 1971.

It was Arlo Guthrie’s cover in 1972 that popularized the song and brought attention to rail lines that were vanishing across middle America. The song was a hit for Guthrie on his 1972 album Hobo’s Lullaby, reaching number 4 on the Billboard Easy Listening chart and number 18 on the Hot 100 chart. It was Guthrie’s only top-40 hit.

The chorus line from the song, “Good morning America, how are ya?” became a cultural touchstone in the United States.

Here are the lyrics to the song.

Riding on the City of New Orleans
Illinois Central Monday morning rail
Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders
Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail
All along the southbound odyssey
The train pulls out at Kankakee
Rolls along past houses, farms and fields
Passin’ trains that have no names
Freight yards full of old black men
And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles

Good morning America how are you?
Don’t you know me I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Dealin’ cards games with the old men in the club car
Penny a point ain’t no one keepin’ score
Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle
Feel the wheels rumblin’ ‘neath the floor
And the sons of Pullman porters
And the sons of engineers
Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steam
Mothers with their babes asleep
Are rockin’ to the gentle beat
And the rhythm of the rails is all they feel

Good morning America how are you?
Said don’t you know me I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done

Nighttime on The City of New Orleans
Changing cars in Memphis, Tennessee
Half way home, we’ll be there by morning
Through the Mississippi darkness
Rolling down to the sea
But all the towns and people seem
To fade into a bad dream
And the steel rails still ain’t heard the news
The conductor sings his songs again
The passengers will please refrain
This train’s got the disappearing railroad blues

Good night, America, how are you?
Said don’t you know me I’m your native son
I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans
I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done