Island Records

How about a music video? Hey, if it’s in IMDb.com, it’s a movie! All four minutes of it.

Seriously, Steve Winwood packs a fair amount of train and railroad-related action in those 240 seconds. It’s a quickie snapshot of operations on the old Southern Railway mainline through Manassas, Virginia.

Aside from the railroad bits, it’s an interesting story about how the song was written and the music composed.

At the time of filming, the Southern had merged (1982) with Norfolk & Western to form Norfolk & Southern Railway, still a big Class 1 railroad to this day.

Let’s see how the MTV crowd (back when they actually played music television) interpret trains into this video.

A Southern Railway local freight does some switching in Manassas, Virginia. Just barely in shot is a red, bay window caboose and an EMD Geep of some sort switching a gondola onto a siding.

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