I just heard a very haunting song of late.
Simon and Garfunkel's "The Boxer."

it may have made to be just the story of a boy who leaves to be a boxing-fighter, but it means much more to me, the way it sounds, the way it personifies deep longing of wanting to return home.

I am sure I have heard the term "Boxer" for a crew on a railway before, because it sounds so familiar to me.
the beginning states what happened to me:

"When I left my home and my family I was no more than a boy in a company of strangers, in the quiet of the railway station running there...layiong low, seeking out the poor quarters where the ragged people go."

exactly how I felt when I left Connecticut.

"And the years are rolling by me, they are rocking evenly, I am older than I once was, but younger then I'll be that's not unusual......"

the "rolling by" and "Rocking evenly" sounds EXACTLY like a string of old freightcars, although rusted, forgotten and beat up, still bearing their old New Haven lettering, being hauled down the tracks in the connecticut marshland I saw once, long ago. I know it was a steam engine pulling them, but which engine I cannot remember, which scares me. I remember every engine, which makes me think I saw a ghost, because this certainly was no dream. as the second quote states: I am older than I once was, but still young at heart.

"It isn't strange, after changes upon changes, we are more or less the same......"
I have not changed in almost any major way.

"And I'm laying out my winter clothes and wishing I was gone....going home....."
you don't know how much.

"And he carries the reminders of every hand that laid him down or cut him 'till he cried out, in his anger and his shame, I am Leaving!, I am Leaving!...but the fire still remains........"

it sounds like all the times I have been ready to give up, just lie down and stop breathing, but I remember the fires in those locomotives in Essex and it always brings me back from the dark times.