“Up And Down This Road I Go”

The iron horse evokes images of smoke and cinders billowing from a steam locomotive stack as it sails down the trackless wastes of the frontier. Much like the lore of Old West cattle drives, the legendary construction of the Western railroads inspired a litany of songs and many special colorful terms and bits of doggerel. An Irish and American folk tune Poor Paddy Works on the Railway immortalized the backbreaking labor of the gandy dancers. In eighteen hundred and sixty-three, I came across