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Quotes of the Day for 16 September 2004 - Trains

James Jerome Hill was born near Rockwood, Ontario, Canada on this day in 1838. In 1856 he moved to Saint Paul, Minnesota to work for a steamship operator, in 1878 he organized a partnership to buy up the struggling St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. He built a transcontinental rail line in a unique way. He did it without any government funding to start with. He also didn't bother to build a road to existing cities, but layed track about 200 miles into the wilderness, then enticed folks from as far away as Sweden to start farms and build new towns. He also didn't hesitate to build spur lines to various mines and mills to build traffic. Between the way he built his railroad, later known as the Great Northern, and the way he built his financial empire later, he earned the sobriquet Empire Builder. In his honor, and also in recognition of Charles S. Crocker who built the Southern Pacific (born on this day in 1822), today's theme is Trains.

Trains are wonderful.... To travel by train is to see nature and human beings, towns and churches and rivers, in fact, to see life.
     - Agatha Christie, 1890 - 1976

When a train goes through a tunnel and it gets dark, you don't throw away the ticket and jump off. You sit still and trust the engineer.
     - Corrie Ten Boom, 1892 - 1987

Neither a wise man nor a brave man lies down on the tracks of history to wait for the train of the future to run over him.
     - Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1890 - 1969

Railway termini ... are our gates to the glorious and the unknown. Through them we pass out into adventure and sunshine, to them, alas, we return.
     - Edward Morgan Forster, 1879 - 1970

There isn't a train I wouldn't take, No matter where it's going.
     - Edna Saint Vincent Millay, 1892 - 1950

Most people have that fantasy of catching the train that whistles in the night.
     - Willie Nelson

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