| Riding on the City of New Orleans | 
| Illinois Central Monday morning rail | 
| Fifteen cars and fifteen restless riders | 
| Three conductors and twenty-five sacks of mail | 
| All along the southbound odyssey | 
| The train pulls out at Kankakee | 
| Rolls along past houses, farms and fields | 
| Passin' trains that have no names | 
| Freight yards full of old black men | 
| And the graveyards of the rusted automobiles | 
| Good morning America how are you? | 
| I said, don’t you know me I’m your native son | 
| I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans | 
| I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done | 
| Dealin' card games with the old men in the club car | 
| Penny a point ain’t no one keepin' score | 
| Pass the paper bag that holds the bottle | 
| Feel the wheels rumblin' 'neath the floor | 
| And the sons of pullman porters and the sons of engineers | 
| Ride their father’s magic carpets made of steel | 
| Mothers with their babes asleep are rockin' to the gentle beat | 
| And the rhythm of the rails is all that they feel | 
| Good morning America how are you? | 
| I said, don’t you know me I’m your native son | 
| I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans | 
| I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done | 
| Good morning America how are you? | 
| I said, don’t you know me I’m your native son | 
| I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans | 
| I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done | 
| Good night, America, how are you? | 
| I said, don’t you know me I’m your native son | 
| I’m the train they call The City of New Orleans | 
| I’ll be gone five hundred miles when the day is done |