I LOVE TRAINS - Who is John Galt? Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged

Its Sat.evening, 7:30 & I hear a train going by my home.This gives me hope that goods are being transported & there IS an economy.I sleep better when I hear them throughout the night. It calms me. It tells me there is an economy despite the naysayers and there is at least one guy working.Who is John Galt? (Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand) 

It angers me too that other countries have better trains than we do.

As a boy of 5 years old, I rode the train from Cleveland,Ohio to Detroit, Michigan by myself. My parents put me on in Cleveland & my grandparents met me at the station in Detroit and vice versa. 

The conductor kept an eye on me en route. I usually slept on the large bench lying down. It was a whole lot better than the back seat of my Dad's Pontiac Starchief because I didn't get carsick.

The Lake Shore Limited Amtrak Train making its way along the Hudson River in New York

 


 Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Ohio near Toledo often talks about a resurgence of trains rolling through her congressional district laden with rolled steel headed for a revived auto industry in Detroit, my birthplace.  With all the negatives of air travel, Amtrak from Schenectady to Cleveland on "The Lake Shore Limited" is the way to travel now that gasoline is pushing $4 a gallon again. 

 John Galt is a fictional character in Ayn Rand's novel Atlas Shrugged (1957). Although he is not identified by name until the last third of the novel, he is the object of its often-repeated question "Who is John Galt?" and of the quest to discover the answer. Trains, powerful, swift, innovative also are central to this nove.  Its funny the Republicans embrace this book while at the same time refuse to support Amtrak or improve train travel in America. 


 If you haven't read "Atlas Shrugged" by Ayn Rand, "Who is John Galt"? you need to read it to learn why it is so pivotal to the ideologues in this current Presidential election. The movie  Planes Trains and Automobiles with John Candy and Steve Martin, and some great Train Scenes in the movie "Only the Lonely" with John Candy.  I love trains