Your Own Imagination, Waiting There For You

MdeLi Haziran 11, 2022

In the past few years I've come to realize that the past that seemed so magical and wonderful probably weren't all that it was chalked up to be. In spite of that, there is a part of the past that I wasn't alive for that I will always be a sucker for and believe in whole heartedly.

The dawn of trains.

To be sure we do still have them. Electric and diesel trains mostly. But there is something about trains, particularly steam locomotives, that just feels super old yet not in the ugly very problematic way, but moreso in the charming way.

I know that the age of steamies wasn't really that much of a big deal, they were just everywhere because they were the only thing humans had at the time before other means of transportation became available.

And yet, I take one look at old footage of trains from the 60's or 70's and I think "man, I'd love to be a train engineer and just travel the country on a train". Billowing past vast countrysides at immense speeds, doing real work that involved getting your hands dirty as a result of having to shovel coal every so often.

The gif above especially speaks to me because one look at that just immediately catapulted these thoughts that have ingrained into me since I was still learning to speak.

For that I can thank/blame, the late 80's-early 90's show Shining Time Station. My dad recorded a ton of the Thomas the Tank Engine segments for me when they ran reruns on PBS and sometimes he left in the ending tune, which sticks with me even now.

The song itself screams 80's cheese. Like, it doesn't sound out of place at all on the soundtrack to a Care Bears movie or something.

And despite that I am mesmerized and super charmed by it to no end.

This. Fucking. Shot.

Keep in mind that I was probably watching the VHS tape my dad recorded this on in like 1999 when I was five and just starting to get a sense of things. Even though this song was only 10 years old by that point, it felt like it was a lot older. The harsh way of saying it is that it sounded dated the minute Kevin Roth sang it, the more poetic way of saying it is that it feels like it's from a magical time that never happened. At least to me anyway.

It also doesn't hurt that I obviously associated this with Thomas the Tank Engine, a show that is very vague about what time period it's set in, but the books make it very clear that it's set from 1915 onward (did you know that Thomas was accidentally sent to The Island of Sodor from England due to a clerical error on the manufacturer's part during World War I?!). Much of the stories take place in the 1920's and 1930's I'd assume. Either way that itself gave off charming old times vibes.

I've long since grown out of Thomas but damn, seeing that real life train run down the tracks with that cheesy 80's music playing is a real punch to my nostalgia gut.

Apparently the footage for the theme song comes from the 1981 documentary Eighty Four Forty Four, which is about the 800 class Northern-type 4-8-4 steam locomotive that chugged along the Union Pacific Railroad many decades ago. Also the documentary itself was made by the Union Pacific Railroad Public Relations and Advertising Department so that's why it waxes nostalgia so much. It's very surreal seeing the same iconic images of the steam locomotive that I could've sworn was Henry or Gordon with a black coat of paint look somehow older than VHS footage from 1995.

In retrospect Shining Time Station as a whole must've left a big impression on me because the American-ness of that absolute unit there and the overtly Britishness of Thomas (even after localization and having George Carlin do voice-over work) should've made for weird contrasts, instead it added to the allure of a bygone era that really didn't exist. An era that must've involved The Beatles (note, Ringo Starr was a regular on Shining Time Station)! Oh how my weird 5-6 year old brain worked back then.

Or at least I think that's how I processed it, because that's more or less how I still think now even though I should and do know that all of that is false when I think about it for more than five minutes.

Anyway, instead of examining what five year old Kenny thought, let's finish this post off with a nice analysis of the song. I really want to know what makes it tick even now.

Lyrics:

Reach for the speed,

Reach for the whistle

Go where the rail may run

Reach for the words,

Reach for the story

Follow the Rainbow Sun

To a Shining Time Station

Where dreams can come true

Waiting there for you

So much to see,

So far to travel

So much to learn, to know

Friends by your side,

Hopes to hold on to

Who knows how far you'll go

To a Shining Time Station

Where dreams can come true

Your own imagination

Waiting there for you

Of course, now that I've listened to the song in full again for the first time in years I notice that it kinda includes some somber sadness. There's a real vibe here that whatever the "Shining Time Station" is supposed to represent is long gone (and the way this song sounds super dated only adds to that), but that if you ever come back to it it'll embrace you any time.

I've gone back and forth on what exactly "Shining Time Station" represents, but my final take is that it's your childhood innocence. The stuff you left behind a long time ago chasing adventures on the other side of the rainbow. Which I'm going to interpret as turning into an adult. But no matter how far away you go, it'll always be there waiting for you. Presumably with the childhood dreams and imagery you had for your future self to compare to the awful adult you actually turned into still there too.