********************** TRAINS - Al Stewart ********************** Notated by Adam Woolfe. The song structure is verse/verse/bridge/verse/verse/bridge/middle/instrumental (using chords from the verse)/verse/verse/bridge/verse/verse/bridge-ending. After each verse or bridge comes a random number of C/Dm chord pairs followed by two C's. Intro C/Dm/C/Dm/C/Dm/C/C ------ The Trains 'theme', which crops up between the verses, plays over the C/Dm pair of chords, and the notes are E (or G) over the C chord then F,E,F,G,F,E,F over the Dm chord, finishing with an E over the next C chord. Does that make sense? This can be conveniently picked on the top string of a guitar while holding down the rest of the chord on the other strings. Verse ----- C Dm In the sapling years of the post world war, in an English market town C Dm I do believe we travelled in schoolboy blue, the cap upon the crown F G C Am C And books on knee, our faces pressed against the dusty railway carriage panes Am G Dm(+G) G C As all our lives went rolling on the clicking wheels of trains. Bridge ------ Am G#dim Am G F Trains, all our lives were a whistle stop affair, no ties or chains E F G C Throwing words like fireworks in the air, not much remains E Am G F A photograph in your memory through the coloured lens of time E F G C All our lives were just a smudge of smoke against the sky. Middle section -------------- Am Then came surrender, then came the peace E(7) Then revolution, out of the east Am Then came the crash, then came the tears E(7) Then came the thirties, the nightmare years F Then came the same thing over again G Am Mad as the moon that watches over the plain G#dim Am G ---> verse All driven insane. The ending ---------- Like the bridge up until the last line: E F G All our lives are just a smudge of smoke F Am C/Dm repeat to fade Or just a breath of wind against the sky Notes ----- 1) There is no attempt to put any 'timing' into this transcription other than showing the chord changes relative to the words which therefore need to be viewed using a fount with equally spaced characters. 2) This is all done from the record so there will be a few (hopefully small) mistakes. In particular I think any of the E chords above could be 7ths but the ones indicated are the most probable. 3) The 3 awkward chords. These are the ones I called Dm(+G) and G#dim in the song and quite frankly they are pretty much just guesses which seem to fit about right. What I mean by a Dm(+G) is a Dm chord with the G note added - I play this XOOO31 and the G#dim X2O1O1. The numbers here refer to the fret number for strings 1 (bottom) to 6 (top).