Pete Atkin - The Original Original Honky Tonk Night Train Blues lyrics

Atkin I'm the original honky tonk train I'm the one that you see when you're watching a western That's me chugging by Of the ones that you see in the films I'm the best 'un I'll tell you why 'Cause no other loco can ever compare With the places I've been 'cause I've been everywhere And I never once stopped for a moment of restin' And if my fire's burning properly the hot air oughta Rise and go along a lot of tubes That are surrounded by water in the boiler till eventually it moves On down the engine's aorta out to the funnel where the cloud of smoke exudes And now the hot air in the tubes has made the water in the boiler turn to steam -- hot hot hot The steam also rises and collects inside that large symbolic dome at the top top top But if you think that now the steam is just as hot as it is gonna get you're wrong 'cause it's not not not Because this is where the driver opens up the regulator valve handle -- The steam becomes alive again and goes back through the boiler or can Which I call it only 'cause I've a shortage of rhymes ending in -an So having been through the superheater tubes the steam is hotter than ever it was before the heat is more you may be sure the steam now Pa**es on into the piston cylinder and pushes the piston for- Wards and backwards by means of valves which reciprocate in alternation According to simple mechanical law The piston then pushes connecting rods fixed to the wheels That are set on the rails But that's not the end of the story 'cause then all that steam As you will have seen Is blown out as exhaust through the funnel whence it can expire Thereby increasing the draught of the fire So now apart from some rather superfluous detail which doubtless will seem to you obvious, hardly worth saying The story's over in its basic essentials -- the rest is merely overlaying What you can see for yourself quite easily although I would just like to mention the thing on the front that always comes in handy when you want to catch cows