Just then I heard, ‘way off in the night, a train whistle. Not actually a whistle; it was the horn of a diesel locomotive. But to us old-timers, just as the refrigerator is still sometimes the icebox, a diesel horn in the distance is a train whistle. And it awakens all sorts of memories and associations.

A few years ago I transferred into my computer a CD of Jimmie Rodgers: self-styled the Singing Brakeman and recognized as the Father of Country Music. Raised beside railroad tracks in Mississippi, he began his career as a waterboy and worked as a brakeman and switchman before becoming famous for his blue-yodeling style. He also had railroad fever – what my mother called ants in his pants – and in spite of a lifelong struggle with tuberculosis, always seemed to be yearning to be on the road. Where, didn’t matter.

When I was very small, my family lived in a fourth-floor flat about three blocks from the New York State Capitol in Albany. The sounds of the night are still fresh: newsboys walking the streets in the wee hours hawking the first edition (“Morning paper! Morning paper!” – I can still play it on the piano with one white key and a black), and now and then a siren. But most of all the switchyards down beside the river, where they made up the trains. A crash, followed by a toot and easy chuffing, repeated many times until, at last, you could tell the train was ready. Heavy puffing, an occasional spasm of quick puffs as the driving wheels spun under the load – some engines had little sandboxes that sprayed the rails on demand to create traction – and a slowly quickening tempo as the great locomotive found its stride. Then a couple of long, lonesome whistles as the train headed off down the Hudson River in the night. You don’t forget things like that. Especially the lonesome whistle part. It’ll always make you feel lonesome, even if you’re not.

Last night the first song to come up was “The Mystery of No. 5,” about a fireman who died while walking to work, so his engine was cold. The opening line is, “I stepped out this mornin’ to watch my drivers roll.” The first time I ever saw driving wheels up close, I was probably about five. They were taller than I was by at least half! Cast-iron, shackled to connecting rods thicker than my arms, and smelling of oil and steam, they dwelt in a perpetual hiss. And when the locomotive whistle blew, and the pistons began to move, and the wheels to turn – wow! I remember my father’s hand clutching my shoulder tightly.

The impact of the steam engine, which went through multiple revisions for about 200 years, was intense. To stand beside a big locomotive steaming for a start is to be amazed at what we puny little human beings can bring to life. If you don’t run out of fuel or water or blow up the boiler (as many did), the power of these immense beasts can be hypnotic.

I’ve ridden the Harry Potter train that chugs valiantly up over a height of land and then whooshes down to the sea. I’ve taken the TGV: starts on the dot without a sound and zooms through the French countryside at almost 300 kilometers an hour. Also the Flåmsbana, the world’s steepest non-cog railway, running between alpine Flåm and seaside Myrdal with a stop at a waterfall along the way where a mystical naiad seems to appear out of nowhere. And last summer, the train from sea level in Bergen to tundra highlands and back down again to the sea at Oslo. Lovely rides, all of them. But not one of them evokes the romance of an old-fashioned American train whistle in the night. You always wish you were going.

In your imagination it’s headed west, out onto the open prairies and over the mountains. Or south to New Orleans, with “fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders.” The train song canon sometimes seems limitless. With the exception of a few peppy tunes like “The Wabash Cannonball,” most have a wistful, sorrowful feel: “Nine hundred miles from my home, and I hate to hear that lonesome whistle blow.” In many of them, the engineer dies, always with his hand on the throttle. It’s America at its go-go best, but laden with regrets – for lost loves, blown opportunities, flights from the long arm of the law, and the sad ends of lives gone adrift: “No one knew that Hobo Bill was taking his last ride.”

Meantime, old-timers like me and a few friends hope for the return of mighty steam, fueled, perhaps, by hydrogen and replacing oil-burning diesel. Till then, we sit in our warm self-isolation rooms listening to the drip of icy water from the eaves outside and the songs of railroading life, prodigies, and calamities, hoping to hear, just once before we go, the cry in the night of a locomotive going somewhere wonderful.