The Baby Train is a popular urban legend

Urban legend

An urban legend, urban myth, urban tale, or contemporary legend, is a form of modern folklore consisting of stories that may or may not have been believed by their tellers to be true...

, told in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

, United Kingdom

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

 and Australia

Australia

Australia , officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country in the Southern Hemisphere comprising the mainland of the Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous smaller islands in the Indian and Pacific Oceans. It is the world's sixth-largest country by total area...

. According to the rumor, a certain small town had an unusually high birth rate. It seems that a freight train would pass through the town at 5:00 am and blow its whistle, waking up all the residents. Since it was too late to go back to sleep and too early to get up, couples would find other ways to amuse themselves in bed. This resulted in the mini-baby boom.

The story is related to the rumor that birth rates spiked nine months after the Northeast Blackout of 1965, the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, and certain natural disasters and similar events.

Folklorist Jan Harold Brunvand

Jan Harold Brunvand

Jan Harold Brunvand is an American folklorist. A professor emeritus of the University of Utah, he best known for spreading the concept of the urban legend, a form of modern folklore...

published a book The Baby Train & Other Lusty Urban Legends in 1993.