Midnight Train To Georgia
This song, written and first recorded by Jim Weatherly, was inspired by Charlie’s Angel and '70s hairdo sensation Farrah Fawcett, who was dating Weatherly's friend Lee Majors at the time and told the songwriter she was taking the “midnight plane to Houston” to visit her family. The song was renamed to "Midnight Train to Georgia" when Cissy Houston (Whitney's mum) wanted to record it but avoid the Houston double-up. Her version attracted the attention of Gladys Knight & The Pips, who reached number 1 in the US and won a Grammy with their remake, which has since been named one of Rolling Stones’ 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
The Polar Express
Creepy Tom Hanks and bodgy CGI help to teach a young boy the true meaning of Christmas in this movie, which is based on a book from the '80s. What was the Polar Express? Well, it wasn’t a real train to start with, since it could seemingly transport kids from their bedrooms in upstate Michigan to the North Pole, but it was based on a train engine called Pere Marquette 1225 that the book’s author, Chris Van Allsburg, used to play on as a child. The number “1225” always reminded him of Christmas Day (i.e. the 25th of the 12th) and he used to imagine the magical train would take you from the snowy Midwest all the way to Santa Claus.
The Orient Express
The Orient Express is one of the few “real” trains on this list, and though it’s associated with mysteries, murder and intrigue, it was really just a normal international railway service - like the Eurostar of its time. The very first Orient Express was a seven-car “luxury” service, the brainchild of a wealthy Belgian fellow by the name of Georges Nagelmackers, who invited a bunch of cashed-up friends to travel overnight from Paris to Vienna, where they dined on things like oysters, game animals and entire buffets of desserts. Over time, the service expanded to go all the way to Constantinople (Istanbul) and some services started in Calais, meaning the train really did run through all of Continental Europe. It became most famous, obviously, after Agatha Christie published her murder mystery in 1934, and though the train is officially no more (blame European air travel), it remains one of the most famous and mysterious train journeys of our time.
The Chattanooga Choo Choo
Track 29 was the starting point for the Chattanooga Choo Choo, a fictional train appearing in the highly catchy (and mildly irritating) number written by Mack Gordon and Harry Warren for 1940s Hollywood film Sun Valley Serenade. They wrote it while travelling southbound on a small, wood-burning steam train, the Birmingham Special, but the song itself tells you about the glory of heading southbound from New York City to Chattanooga, Tennessee where apparently nothing could be finer than having dinner in the diner, eating ham and eggs while crossing some part of either North or South Carolina. Rhyming for the win!
Doc Brown’s Train
The Jules Verne Train or "Train Time Machine" or simply the "Time Train", labeled "ELB" on each side after its creator, was the culmination of Dr. Emmett Brown's previous experience with building the DeLorean time machine and working with the steam locomotive that pushed it to 88 m.p.h. The flux capacitor was still included in this design, in the place of the lamp at the front of the locomotive[2] Unlike the DeLorean, the external components of the Time Train were symmetrical on both sides of the vehicle, possibly representing a more sophisticated grasp of the time travel technology on Doc's part, despite being constructed from more primitive materials. On October 27, 1985, when Doc met up with Marty McFly and Jennifer Parker, he chose the most likely place that they might be at that given time, the site of the DeLorean's destruction. Interestingly, before the Time Train appeared, it triggered the bells and gates on the nearby railroad crossing as if another train was coming. This could mean that this time machine is so powerful that it enables a connection with its destination time even before arriving to that point of time.