Train
The train is Taylor's recurring image of journey, departure, and arrival, a vehicle of fated or scheduled movement that the speaker rides, jumps from, watches leave, or waits for in vain. It runs from Red onwards (Sad Beautiful Tragic, The Archer, cardigan, the last great american dynasty, willow, champagne problems, New Romantics), and shifts register with where the speaker stands in relation to it: the boarded train marks departure or arrival, the train jumped from marks her rejection of the journey, and the train that never comes marks the failure of an expected connection.
The train carries movement the speaker did not set going, a schedule, a track, momentum put in motion by something or someone else. Its force often lies in whether she is on the train, off it, or watching it pull away: the train rarely waits, and the moment of its passing usually marks the song's emotional turn. Where cars in the catalogue stand for agency and shared flight, trains more often stand for inevitability and the speaker's exposure to forces moving at their own pace.
Appears in 10 songs
“You booked the night train for a reason So you could sit there in this hurt Bustling crowds or silent sleepers You're not sure which is worse”
The night train represents the aftermath of rejection, the journey away from the failed proposal, where the man is surrounded by society (crowds and sleepers) but utterly alone. Community readers add two registers to the night train. "Night Train" is also the name of a cheap fortified wine, so the journey marks a fall from the celebratory Dom Pérignon to the wine of hard-luck drinking, the social descent written into the drink itself. And the train is booked rather than caught - the choice of the slow night service reads as deliberate, a setting chosen to wallow in the rejection and carry the sorrow home in full view.
“We wait for trains that just aren't comin'”
The trains represent both literal stagnation (England's train-based culture, waiting for something that never arrives) and metaphorical false hope, wanting to go someplace but feeling there is nowhere to go. Also functions as mass transit, reinforcing the collective 'we' of the song.
“'Cause I knew you Steppin' on the last train Marked me like a bloodstain”
Full analytical context awaits the cardigan episode extraction.
“Steppin' on the last train”
The last train as departure, James leaving, the relationship's momentum moving away from Betty on a schedule she cannot control.
“But you wake up on the train with your headphones gone”
The train may be a commuter train, which would place him between the life he chose and the one he left. He wakes up on it with his headphones gone and the melody still in his head. He is not at home, and he is not really present where he is either, which is what the bridge calls never being where you are. In the last chorus he wakes on the train alone.
“Northbound I got carried away As you boarded your train South, south, south, south, south, south”
The directional opposition (northbound/southbound trains) figures the relationship's structural divergence, both in motion, neither stopping, going opposite ways.
“The smoke cloud billows out his mouth like a freight train through a small town”
The freight-train simile renders the speaker's addressee as something massive, loud, and damaging passing through. Full analytical context awaits the I Can Fix Him (No Really I Can) episode extraction.
“You know that my train could take you home”
Full analytical context awaits the willow episode extraction.
“Rebekah rode up on the afternoon train, it was sunny”
The train marks Rebekah's arrival into the narrative and into the world of Rhode Island society, a vehicle of fated movement bringing her to the life and scrutiny that will define her public identity.
“I jump from the train, I ride off alone”
Full analytical context awaits the Archer episode extraction.
“Silence, the train runs off its tracks”
Full analytical context awaits the Sad Beautiful Tragic episode extraction.