Railway Quotes

“Sometimes, the Best Adventures are the Ones We can only Dream about.”
― Wilbert Awdry, Your Favorite Thomas the Tank Engine

“Once upon a time,
there was a Zen sign
at every small railway crossing in America

Stop. Look. And listen.”
― Dick Allen, Zen Master Poems (1)

“What happens when a leader misses his steps on the ladder is what happens when a train misses the rail. Be on track.”
― Israelmore Ayivor, Leaders' Ladder

“. . . in the distance I hear a train rushing over the rails, but we are moving away from this place and all that is has meant to us, and that is all right.”
― Veronica Roth, Allegiant

“आज रेलवे ने उसे धोखा दिया था. स्थानीय पैसेंजर ट्रेन को रोज की तरह 2 घंटा लेट समझकर वह घर से चला था, पर वह डेढ़ घंटे लेट होकर चल दी थी.”
― Shrilal Shukla, राग दरबारी

“The operating management, providing as it does for the care of near thirty thousand miles of railway, is far more important than that for construction in which there is comparatively little doing.”
― John Bloomfield Jervis

“And yet on that bench at Jacobacci, I was glad I had left everyone else behind. Although this was a town with a main street and a railway station, and people with dogs and electric lights it was near enough to the end of the earth to give me the impression that I was a solitary explorer in a strange land. That illusion (which was an illusion in the South Pole and at the headwaters of the Nile) was enough of a satisfaction to me to make me want to go forward.”
― Paul Theroux, The Old Patagonian Express: By Train Through the Americas

“železničke stanice u ovoj zemlji često su daleko od užeg centra, ni to ne znam baš zaštoo, ali mogao bih da nabrojim čitavu listu gradova u kojima sa stanice tek treba da stigneš u pravi grad, kao da se ti gradovi stide svojih stanica, ili kao da bi stanice htele da se drže što dalje od gradova koje predstavljaju.”
― Krzysztof Varga, Trociny

“It would be difficult to find a man still on the early side of his thirties who had acquired wealth and power at the speed that Tom Severin had. He'd started as a mechanical engineer designing engines, then progressed to railway bridges, and had eventually built his own railway line, all with the apparent ease of a boy playing leapfrog. Severin could be generous and considerate, but his better qualities were unanchored by anything resembling a conscience.”
― Lisa Kleypas, Devil's Daughter

“Conversations were struck up between strangers, regular diners as well as infrequent customers, as if united by a sense of gratitude at the sheer unlikeliness of it all - a high achievement of industrial civilisation that deserved to remain for everyone, but which has now gone the way of the airship and the ocean liner. Much of the nostalgia concerning railways is partial, even false; not this.
[On British railway dining cars]”
― Simon Bradley, The Railways: Nation, Network and People

“The emergency services had not yet been organized.
Rosine could go where she wished. Her high heels made her stumble in the darkness, over the stones, the frozen clods of soil, over the tussocks of grass, the countless obstacles of the rough earth. She was shivering with cold and thought she might be about to faint away amid the sinister din of the disaster.

A fearful chaos was becoming apparent. Rude forms stood erect, the silhouette of a heap of rails. Lanterns, miserable yellow stars, circulated hither and thither. There were even household oil-lamps to be seen, with which the wind dealt harshly. And, all the time, people were running ...”
― Maurice Renard, Hands of Orlac

“Don't you think it's rather nice to think that we're in a book that God's writing? If I were writing a book, I might make mistakes. But God knows how to make the story end just right--in the way that's best for us.”
― E. Nesbit, The Railway Children

“তখন আমি বেশ তরুণ ছিলুম
আমি সবে ষোলো বছরের হবো হয়তো কিন্তু ছেলেবেলার স্মৃতি মুছে গিয়েছিল
যেখানে জন্মেছিলুম সেখান থেকে ৪৮,০০০ মাইল দূরে
আমি ছিলুম মসকোতে, তিনঘণ্টির হাজার মিনার
আর সাতটা রেলস্টেশান
আর ওই হাজার আর তিন মিনার আর সাতটা রেলস্টেশান
আমার জন্যে যথেষ্ট ছিল না
কারণ আমি ছিলুম গরমমেজাজ আর পাগল তরুণ
আমার হৃদয় ইফিসিয়াসের মন্দির কিংবা
মসকোর রেড স্কোয়ারের মতন ছিল তপ্ত
সূর্যাস্তের সময়ে
আর আমার দুই চোখ ওই পুরোনো রাস্তা-ধরে চলার সময়ে জ্বলজ্বল করতো
আর আমি আগেই এমন খারাপ কবি ছিলুম
যে আমি জানতুম না তা কেমন করে নিজের সঙ্গে বয়ে নিয়ে যাই”
― Blaise Cendrars

“For many country folk, the railway was Paris. Its gleaming tracks brought tales of success, prosperity and realised dreams to the provinces, qualities with which the capital was increasingly seen as synonymous. For a countrywoman like Madeleine, short on money and luck, overworked, and whose future appeared only to offer more of the same, those dazzling steel tracks represented a chance. All at once, resignation turned to hope. Suddenly, Madeleine could see clearly. If she stayed in Bessines, her future was mapped out – and it was bleak. But if she boarded the train to Paris, anything was possible – perhaps even happiness. Jeanne and Widow Guimbaud were horrified when, not five years after Marie-Clémentine’s birth, Madeleine announced that her mind was made up: she was going to start a new life in Paris.”
― Catherine Hewitt, Renoir's Dancer: The Secret Life of Suzanne Valadon

“The law of 11 June 1842 establishing the French railroad system was passed in the same year as a train accident killed forty persons on the short line to Versailles. The controversial new legislation provided government guarantees to private investors, as well as state aid for the construction of a rail network radiating out from Paris. The law of 11 June also sparked a railway boom that attracted investors and was popular with the public. A second railway bill was passed in 1846, promising additional expansion. The father of the teenage artist Gustave Dore, for example, was a state- trained and -paid civil engineer assigned to survey the route of a future line between Lyon and Geneva.
(...)

...during the 1840s writers such as George Sand began to predict that the commercial impact of the railroad would quickly destroy the local customs and traditions that still regulated the culture of most of rural France.”
― Robert J. Bezucha, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848

“Vernet received his commission for this project in 1838, a year in which concessions for the construction of railroads were a subject of passionate debate, and many of the deputies were carried away by visions of the glorious future this new invention would usher in, typical of which was the speech of the director of bridges and railroads in which he proclaimed that, after the invention of the printing press, railroads represented the greatest advance in the history of civilization.
In response to this enthusiasm Vernet broke traditional rules of decorum in his enormous mural, combining classical figures and traditional allegorical emblems with products of the industrial revolution. In one section of his mural composition, usually entitled Le Génie de la Science (The genius of Science), a nude allegorical figure is seated in the foreground, one hand on an air pump, the other on an anvil, while a modern steam locomotive is driven toward a railroad tunnel in the background (see Figure 2-2). If Vernet had been limited to one symbol to characterize the social and economic reality of the July Monarchy, it is doubtful that he could have found a better one.”
― Michael Paul Driskel, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848

“The image of the locomotive and these signs of industry were closely linked, of course, in that construction of the railroad lines lowered transportation costs, stimulated economic growth, and led to the development of modern coal, iron, and engineering industries. It should be noted, however, that while progressive industrialization may have been a defining characteristic of economic life during the July Monarchy, few painters actually dealt with this aspect of contemporary reality in a direct way. This points up the fact that while Vernet’s mural may have been most representative of its time, it was not typical of the art of his contemporaries. This should caution us against making easy generalizations about the relations between art and society, or believing that art necessarily reflects its social context in a direct and unmediated way.”
― Michael Paul Driskel, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848

“It is perhaps not superfluous to point out here that throughout the 1830s and 1840s travel was still for the most part an activity for the rich or the adventurous. Most transportation on the European continent was by ship or mail coach, and it was time-consuming, expensive, and uncomfortable. Not until the emergence of the train did travel become an activity for the middle and lower middle class. Yet the railroads were still in their infancy under the July Monarchy. The first passenger railway was not built until 1837, and by 1840 only 433 kilometers of rail had been laid down. Then railroad building picked up speed; by 1848, 1,592 kilometers of rail lines were in use while 2,144 more were under construction. The railroads were to encourage yet a new kind of travel publication, the railroad guide or itinerary, which described and illustrated (in wood engravings or lithographs) the major sights along a particular line. However, this new type of publication, though it originated during the July Monarchy, did not become widespread until the Second Empire.”
― Petra ten-Doesschate Chu, The Art of the July Monarchy: France, 1830 to 1848

“Look at the screws on the railways, even one of them is important, even one of them can change the fate of the train! There are such screws in your life, they are very small, but they carry the potential to have a huge impact on your destiny!”
― Mehmet Murat ildan