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Jun 6th 2011!⃝The song is about mortality. "Locomotive breath" is time. The pulsing of the steam engine and the "shuffling" madness describe the never ending ticking of the clock.
The all-time loser is man, because no man has ever beaten time. The metaphor is especially strong because like a train on its tracks, we're moving in a single direction with no ability to change our path when it comes to our lifespan.
The scraping piston could refer to the heart, or entropy in general. Each beat wears out the engine a little more. And the steam on his brow is an obvious reference to sweating and hard work.
As mentioned earlier, "Old Charlie" is Darwin, and his stealing the handle means we are genetically hard wired to age.
"The train, it won't stop going, No way to slow down." reinforces the notion of time being unidirectional and constant.
"He sees his children jumping off
at stations, one by one." His children are growing up and moving away.
"His woman and his best friend in bed and having fun." His advancing age means his sexual abilities are also declining and he's powerless to stop them.
"He's crawling down the corridor on his hands and knees" Now he's even too old to walk upright, and he's heading down the corridor, probably toward the light at the end of the tunnel (another train metaphor).
"He hears the silence howling, catches angels as they fall." He's at the very end of his life, all alone in the silence, perhaps limbo. He's not in heaven because the angels are still falling from above him.
"And the all-time winner has got him by the balls." This is clearly Death, who is in total control at this point, and has beaten every man that ever lived, making him the all-time winner.
"He picks up Gideon's Bible, turned open at page one" This is a great line because it shows that the entire process then restarts, referring to the book of Genesis and the creation of the universe.
"God stole the handle and the train it won't stop going, no way to slow down." This is Ian's way of comparing man's life cycle with that of the universe. Time even destroys the universe eventually, because god stole the "big" handle, and there's "no way to slow down".
