Not a conductor, but an engineer.  However, I strongly suspect this
is the poem you're looking for:

The King

"Farewell, Romance!" the Cave-men said;
  "With bone well carved He went away,
Flint arms the ignoble arrowhead,
  And jasper tips the spear to-day.
Changed are the Gods of Hunt and Dance,
And He with these.  Farewell, Romance!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Lake-folk sighed;
  "We lift the weight of flatling years;
The caverns of the mountain-side
  Hold him who scorns our hutted piers.
Lost hills whereby we dare not dwell,
Guard ye his rest.  Romance, farewell!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Soldier spoke;
  "By sleight of sword we may not win,
But scuffle 'mid uncleanly smoke
  Of arquebus and culverin.
Honour is lost, and none may tell
Who paid good blows.  Romance, farewell!"

"Farewell, Romance!" the Traders cried;
  "Our keels have lain with every sea;
The dull-returning wind and tide
  Heave up the wharf where we would be;
The known and noted breezes swell
Our trudging sails. Romance, farewell!"

"Good-bye, Romance!" the Skipper said;
  "He vanished with the coal we burn.
Our dial marks full-steam ahead,
  Our speed is timed to half a turn.
Sure as the ferried barge we ply
'Twixt port and port.  Romance, good-bye!"

"Romance!" the season-tickets mourn,
  "He never ran to catch His train,
But passed with coach and guard and horn --
  And left the local -- late again!"
Confound Romance!...  And all unseen
Romance brought up the nine-fifteen.

His hand was on the lever laid,
  His oil-can soothed the worrying cranks,
His whistle waked the snowbound grade,
  His fog-horn cut the reeking Banks;
By dock and deep and mine and mill
The Boy-god reckless laboured still!

Robed, crowned and throned, He wove His spell,
  Where heart-blood beat or hearth-smoke curled,
With unconsidered miracle,
  Hedged in a backward-gazing world;
Then taught His chosen bard to say:
"Our King was with us -- yesterday!"


On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 11:44 AM, JOHN RADCLIFFE <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Dear Michael Gallagher
>
> I'm afraid I don't know of a poem about a railroad conductor who is a
> god-like figure. I am circulating your note to various colleagues who may be
> able to help.
>
> Kipling certainly had a strong interest in railroads, and when he was living
> in Vermont from 1892 to 1896 he used to enjoy spending time with the station
> master at Brattleboro and hearing railway stories.
>
> He wrote some twenty stories in which railways figure, among them ".007" in
> which the main character is a locomotive. In that tale there is a
> yard-master who is clearly master of all he surveys, and a vivid account of
> the marshalling yard at night:
>
> Lanterns waved, or danced up and down, before and behind him; and on every
> side, six tracks deep, sliding backward and forward, with clashings of
> couplers and squeals of hand-brakes, were cars--more cars than ·007 had
> dreamed of. There were oil-cars, and hay-cars, and stock-cars full of lowing
> beasts, and ore-cars, and potato-cars with stovepipe-ends sticking out in
> the middle; cold-storage and refrigerator cars dripping ice-water on the
> tracks; ventilated fruit--and milk-cars; flat-cars with truck-waggons full of
> market-stuff; flat-cars loaded with reapers and binders, all red and green
> and gilt under the sizzling electric lights; flat cars piled high with
> strong-scented hides, pleasant hemlock-plank, or bundles of shingles;
> flat-cars creaking to the weight of thirty-ton castings, angle-irons, and
> rivet-boxes for some new bridge; and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of
> box-cars loaded, locked and chalked. Men--hot and angry--crawled among and
> between and under the thousand wheels; men took flying jumps through his
> cab, when he halted for a moment; men sat on his pilot as he went forward,
> and on his tender as he returned; and regiments of men ran along the tops of
> the box-cars beside him, screwing down brakes, waving their arms, and crying
> curious things.
>
> In Captains Courageous, a story of cod-fishing on the Grand Banks, a boy is
> lost overboard from a liner and picked up by a fishing schooner from
> Gloucester Mass. When his parents in San Diego hear that he is safe, they
> make an epic journey across America by special car, in eighty-seven hours
> and thirty-five minutes. There is some vivid description of this feat:
>
> The six-foot drivers were hammering their way to San Bernardino and the
> Mohave wastes, but this was no grade for speed. That would come later. The
> heat of the desert followed the heat of the hills as they turned east to the
> Needles and the Colorado River. The car cracked in the utter drought and
> glare, and they put crushed ice to Mrs. Cheyne's neck, and toiled up the
> long, long grades, past Ash Fork, towards Flagstaff, where the forests and
> quarries are, under the dry, remote skies. The needle of the speed-indicator
> flicked and wagged to and fro; the cinders rattled on the roof, and a whirl
> of dust sucked after the whirling wheels...
>
> ... And so they dropped the dry sands and moon-struck rocks of Arizona
> behind them, and grilled on till the crash of the couplings and the wheeze
> of the brake-hose told them they were at Coolidge by the Continental Divide.
> Three bold and experienced men--cool, confident, and dry when they began;
> white, quivering, and wet when they finished their trick at those terrible
> wheels--swung her over the great lift from Albuquerque to Glorietta and
> beyond Springer, up and up to the Raton Tunnel on the State line, whence
> they dropped rocking into La Junta, had sight of the Arkansaw, and tore down
> the long slope to Dodge City, where Cheyne took comfort once again from
> setting his watch an hour ahead...
>
> I hope this is helpful
>
> Maybe colleagues will come up with other suggestions.
>
> All best, John Radcliffe
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> From: Michael Gallagher <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Sent: Thursday, 9 October 2014, 16:03
> Subject: Kipling Railroad Poem
>
> Hello,
>
> I am looking for a Kipling poem for use at the beginning of a chapter of
> a book on some American railroads.  This particular poem features a
> god-like figure as a railroad conductor.  I was unable to locate such a
> poem using your site and online searches.  Are you aware of such a poem?
>
> Thank you.
> Michael Gallagher
> Wilmington, Delaware, USA
>
>



-- 
Meredith Dixon <[log in to unmask]>