AVARICIOUS, avaricious, avaricious, avaricious!
What’s the ghostly loco say,
Snorting up a longish incline,
Where the diesels now hold sway?

So pernicious, so pernicious, so pernicious, so pernicious!
It’s astonished at the fate
That befell a once-great railway,
Now dismembered by the State.

Meretricious, meretricious, meretricious, meretricious!
All those fingers in the pie.
All involved in bits of railway.
Bureaucrats alone know why.

So suspicious, so suspicious, so suspicious, so suspicious!
Giving voice to nagging fear.
Mighty shade of bygone glories,
Vanished with rail’s yesteryear.

Inauspcious, inauspicious, inauspicious, inauspcious!
Not surprising, this dismay:
Since the ghost was on the incline,
It’s been downhill all the way.