Subject: I've always wondered... 
From: John
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998

What are double Es and why would you flag them down?
--
John
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Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: a1pump@aol.com (A1pump)
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998

It was a subway line in New York at the time. The E train still exists but I think the double Es ( EE ) are long gone and somewhat replaced by the N and R (2 separate but similar lines ).

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: mikebvc@ripco.com (Mike Stillman)
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998

EE or "double E" is also a gauge of track width. Double E locomotives were the largest trains on American railroads, and a trainman who flagged down the double E's was probably highly regarded by his peers.

Consider the song "China Cat Sunflower" by Robert Hunter and Jerry Garcia. Lyricist Hunter speaks of a "double E waterfall over my back" which would refer to a waterfall as wide as EE railroad tracks.

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: Robert McNamara (rjmac@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998

Could be, but Hunter using "double E" to refer to width could also be a reference to a shoe size. Double E shoes would be extremely wide, and Hunter has been known to make shoe references elsewhere. (Though Springsteen has claimed to have written the "only pop song from the point of view of a shoe salesman" when introducing "Highway 29.")

I always liked "flaggin' down the Double E" as a subway reference as it takes what's essentially a rural image that might be found in a folksong and it takes into an urban (and subterranean) setting. It's entirely possible he was thinking of a freight train, but then the song doesn't have that nifty reference to where the song was most likely written, New York City.

-- Robert

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: shiphour@aol.com (Shiphour)
Date: 1 Nov 1998

irish76730@aol.com (Irish76730) wrote:

I know the subways and I can't picture anyone other that a wino flagging down the double EE or and other subway train. I think Dylan was referring to some kind of locomotive.

I'd have to agree:

(1) The first line of the song sets a tone by referring to riding on a "mail train," and the NYC subways don't carry mail.

(2) NYC subways don't have brakemen (only motormen and conductors, so far as I know) and of course, subways are not, to my knowledge, ever flagged down anyway. Little red lights do the trick.

(3) Furthermore, with references to the moon and the sun, the feel of the song seems quite definitely an outdoors one, and while NYC has a few elevated subways (yes, I know that's an oxymoron) from which you could see the sun and the moon, the song just doesn't convey an urban feel to me.

(4) If people would like to continue believing that the reference is to the old EE line of the IND, there's certainly no harm in it. We don't have to take Dylan songs literally if we get more enjoyment by not looking at them too closely.

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: Robert McNamara (rjmac@mindspring.com)
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998

Shiphour wrote:

(4) If people would like to continue believing that the reference is to the old EE line of the IND, there's certainly no harm in it. We don't have to take Dylan songs literally if we get more enjoyment by not looking at them too closely.

The points you raise make sense so far as they go. But they suggest that he's just talking about some vague train, and he's not purposely mixing the urban and rural imagery, at a time when his writing was remarkable for its mixture of such images. Why would he not toss in a reference to the New York subway? Why talk about some generic train, if he could use a specific train to some effect?

First of all, would Dylan mention a subway? Sure. He referred to the subway in earlier songs, and would return to it within a year for "Visions of Johanna." (And according to news reports, Dylan was
literally riding the NY subway as late as the early 1990s.)

I'd never heard the term "double e" to refer to a tandem locomotive arrangement, but on its face it seems to make sense, so that's a possibility. Nonetheless, the "Double E" in New York did stop a half block from 161 W. 4th, where Dylan had lived for a few years before writing the song, and he certainly would have been aware of that particular train. Most likely he would have ridden it (as would most anyone else who lived in the Village).

And while there's no question some of the images in the song are bucolic, does that mean the entire song has to be? Dylan, at the time he was writing the song, was splitting his time between the city and upstate. So where's this windowsill he's been leaning on all night?

Tipped by the reference to a train that stopped at West 4th St., I always figured he was spending a sleepless night looking out of a city window: if you had walked through the Village at night, and you had bothered to look up, you would have seen people sitting in their windows, watching the passing scene while "leaning on the windowsill."   (It's a familiar New York pose which has generally been eradicated by air conditioning; see Pete Hamill's "A Drinking Life" for a vivid description of windowsill leaning in his old neighborhood in Brooklyn.)

Now, let's look at where this windowsill and the possible subway reference fall in the song: in the first two stanzas, what could be urban references fall on the third and fourth lines, coming after two
opening lines which are quite obviously rural references. (The third stanza also opens with two lines that seem rural; the third and fourth lines in that stanza really have no physical aspect at all, though
perhaps one could claim the reference to failed communication evokes frustration with the city.)

Looked at in this way, the song follows a basic pattern of opening the stanzas with two lines that are set in the country, which are followed by two lines evoking the Village.

In a way, this reminds me of someone's recent posting about listening to "Desolation Row" while looking out a window at a New York street scene.  Highway 61 runs through the Midwest, but the album itself is often rooted in the streets of New York. And it also reminds me of Peter Coyote's comments about watching Albert Grossman smoke a cigarette through his fist and being bowled over by how literal Dylan's writing could be. Maybe in this case the Double E is just the good old Double E.

Oh, one more thing: the NY subway does indeed have brakemen, though, like all brakemen on all railroads, they assemble the trains in the yards and aren't generally seen. And wouldn't the guy who flags down a train actually be the signalman? Of course, Jimmie Rodgers would have gone nowhere as "the singing signalman."

-- Robert

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: Lloyd Fonvielle (navigare@compuserve.com)
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998

Shiphour wrote:

(4) If people would like to continue believing that the reference is to the old EE line of the IND, there's certainly no harm in it.

To anyone who lived in Manhattan in the Sixties, the reference to the IND is unavoidable, just as Strayhorn's reference to the A train means only one thing to residents of Harlem. Dylan is obviously mixing images from the history of railroading, investing the (then) shabby lines of the New York subway with a romance one hadn't noticed before. ("Escapades" is not a word one would normally associate with the activities of the all-night girls out on the D train.) The humor and charm of this couldn't have been lost on any New Yorker rattling around in those dingy cars, and Dylan, as a New Yorker, could not have been unaware of the resonance of these images.

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: sscobie@uvic.ca (Maureen & Stephen Scobie)
Date: Sun, 01 Nov 1998

What are double Es?

Trains pulled by two engines.

Stephen

Subject: Re: I've always wondered...
From: Robert McNamara (rjmac@mindspring.com)
Date: Sat, 31 Oct 1998

nul@jken.demon.co.uk wrote

Ok its a train, but why call it "double Es"?

It was a subway train in New York City, specifically the local that ran on the E line.

In the NYC subways, trains were named with letters or numbers. Trains that were locals usually had a double letter name, hence there was an EE train, which straphangers naturally called "the Double E." The Double E would have stopped at West 4th St. station, and Dylan would have been familiar with it.

In "Visions of Johanna," Dylan refers to the D train, which is another subway line that stops at W. 4th St. station.

-- Robert