Excuse me Alan and everybody, this is pretty OT, but your report immediately brought these lines to my ears:

She caught the Katy
And left me a mule to ride
She caught the Katy
And left me a mule to ride
Now my baby caught the Katy
Left me a mule to ride
The train pulled out
I swung on behind
Crazy 'bout her
That hard headed woman of mine

(Well known from the starting sequence of 'The Blues Brothers', originally by Taj Mahal IIRC, a terrific song)

For an ignorant European as me, you might be the right person to tell me who or what is 'Katy'?

who or what is 'Katy'?



Missouri Kansas Texas Railroad. All its boxcars had "KATY" stencilled on the side and that is how it became known in folklore and song.

Katy was supposedly quite serious about electrifying their Dallas-Houston line before they were bought out by Union Pacific.

Their plans were overlooked on this map.

http://www.trains.com/ctr/objects/images/railroad_electrification_1970s.gif

Best Hopes for non-oil transportation,

Alan

You would never know it from current mainstream media and politics, but believe it or not, there is a certain romance attached to railroads in the USA. It exists side-by-side with a visceral hatred, especially west of the Mississippi River, left over from the railroads' heyday, when their pricing practices for shipping grain and other products were often quite abusive. So it's a yin-and-yang thing.

As is the case with many of the old railroads, there is a Katy historical society. The Katy has a complicated history and is now owned by Union Pacific.