Take That Night Train to Memphis

[bspahh]

A couple of weeks ago, on his Radio 2 show, Bruce Springsteen played Take That Night Train to Memphis by Roy Acuff:

The lyrics include this:

Take that night train to Memphis
Take that night train to Memphis
You know how I'm longing to see you
Leave at three-fifty-seven
And arrive at eleven
Then I'll be shoutin' halleluiah

Does anyone know where that train would have come from? Would a "night train" run from 3.57am to 11am, or 3.57pm to 11pm?

This is a quote from this book:
Rails Across Dixie: A History of Passenger Trains in the American South

Yet another Frisco passenger train operating much of its short route in Dixie, the Memphian, an overnight reclining chair consist (no sleepers) left St. Louis at 11:15pm, arriving Memphis at 7.15am (Parenthetically, might that consist have been the inspiration for the country music hit Take That Night Train to Memphis recorded by Roy Acuff, Dolly Parton and others, and a 1946 B-film in which Acuff & company starred? It meets the criteria, buy so do those of the IC and NC& StL lines, among several).

 

[Taunton]

The film the song came from is 1946, the peak of US train travel when many routes had multiple services. It could be from various points 7 hours away. The precise departure time implies a minor en-route stop. The principal operator of several railroad companies serving Memphis was always the Illinois Central, who had four or more trains a day running Chicago-Memphis-New Orleans. Train No 1, for example, having left Chicago at 9 am, paused at Centralia, in southern Illinois at 3.28 pm and stopped in Memphis at 11.20 late evening. No 9 was about 12 hours later, Centralia at 3.30 am.

It could be anything from any direction - Memphis, Tennessee was a significant hub, in the middle of the USA so 7 hours in any direction. Roy Acuff came from Tennessee, and did other railway songs, of which the Wabash Cannonball is possibly the best known.

 

[bspahh]

Thanks. It is always possible that the song was written without looking up a timetable

 

[Gloster]

With the distance travelled by some trains in the US, could it even be: leave at 3.57 p.m. and arrive at 11.00 a.m. the next morning? However, I agree that the times were just as likely (or more likely) to have been chosen just because they rhymed and fitted the rhythm. (Think of the Midnight-seventeen Train, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays Only (runs ten minutes later on Sundays in July and August) to Georgia.)

 

[Taunton]

Think of the Midnight-seventeen Train, Tuesdays, Fridays and Sundays Only (runs ten minutes later on Sundays in July and August) to Georgia.

Come on ... this is not SNCF in France

But the words should not be taken literally. Contemporary with this 1940s song is Chattanooga Choo-Choo. That refers to running from New York City, through the Carolinas, to Chattanooga. No route from New York to Chattanooga runs through The Carolinas.