Doesn't anybody remember this pearl?
"Along comes the FFV,
The fastest on the line,
Runnin' o'er the C&O road
Just 20 minutes behind,
Headin' into Suffolk, (???)
Headquarters on the line,
Receiving very strict orders
>From the station just behind"
After an opening like that, you probably wouldn't guess it could go
much further downhill, but it does, through lots and lots of verses
(as those heroic-engineer ballads often do). I have no idea whether
Suffolk really was C&O headquarters. The text above differs in that
and other details from the one reprinted in Botkin & Harlow's Treasury
of Railroad Folklore (H&B do say that FFV stood for "Fast Flying
Vestibule"). But that's how I learned the song as a teenager back
during the folkie craze of the early `60s -- although me & my buddies
preferred singing a somewhat more ? um ? irreverent version.
So how come we don't have any good Burlington ballads? Or even a bad
one? Gosh, you could rhyme "Zephyr" with either "heifer" or "deafer."
Imagine the possibilities!
--------------------------
In BRHSlist@yahoogroups.com, "John D. Mitchell, Jr." <cbqrr47@y...>
wrote:
> The "F.F.V", the "Sportsman" & the "George Washington"
> were name trains. Probably the F.F.V. would be
> considered the "Flagship" by most people. The
> railroad said the letters should for "Fast Flying
> Vestibule", not First Families of Virginia, because it
> was the first train with all enclosed vestibule cars>
> John D. Mitchell, Jr.
> --- "wollffee <wolfee@o...>" <wolfee@o...>
> wrote:
> > But, this is the only place I know I can get a
> > quick, reliable train
> > answer. What was the name of the flagship C&O
> > passenger train? was
> > there more than 1? Maybe one of them even connected
> > to the Q and I'm
> > not OT after all!
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