"Freight train" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... were discovered, running near this track; and Dr. Olbers, the discoverer of Pallas, finding that they were nearly in the same track, and sometimes crossed each other, and that they were diminutively small—bearing about the same proportion to a regular planet which a hand-car does to a freight train—imagined that they were formed by the explosion of a large planet; that the boiler of the large locomotive had burst, the fragments had all lighted upon the track again, in the shape of hand-cars, and the hand-cars had magnanimously resolved to keep running, and do the business of the line; ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... departure, I arranged with Russell, Majors, & Waddell that when my pay fell due it should be paid over to my mother. As a matter of interest to the general reader, it may be well in this connection to give a brief description of a freight train. The wagons used in those days by Russell, Majors, & Waddell were known as the "J. Murphy wagons," made at St. Louis specially for the plains business. They were very large and very strongly built, being capable of carrying seven thousand ...
— The Great Salt Lake Trail • Colonel Henry Inman
... additions on every side, until it seemed to threaten to run over the edge of the lot, and looked like a section of a wrecked freight train, with ...
— Sowing Seeds in Danny • Nellie L. McClung
... into Hixon from the east. A dozen of the older Souths, who had not become soldiers, met them there, and, with no word, separated to close about them in a circle of protection. As Callomb's eyes swept the almost deserted streets, so silent that the strident switching of a freight train could be heard down at the edge of town, he shook his head. As he met the sullen glances of the gathering in the court-house yard, he ...
— The Call of the Cumberlands • Charles Neville Buck
... city passed through the place. All at once a new idea occurred to him. He had so often heard men and boys tell of how they had stolen a ride from one town to another. Why shouldn't he be able to get a ride on a freight train to the city. Would it be wrong? Archie thought not, since so many men did it. And anyhow it didn't seem a wicked thing to cheat the railroad. He had heard people say that the company ought to be cheated whenever possible, since it cheated so many others. So, from being so tired and so anxious ...
— The Adventures of a Boy Reporter • Harry Steele Morrison
... thinking danger was somewhere, but invisible. Just then a train of passenger cars, containing General McLaws, General Kershaw, their staffs, and others, rounded the cut in our rear, and was running at break-neck speed into the freight train in front. Those in the passenger cars seeing those from the train in front running for dear life's sake for the woods, began to climb through windows and off of the platforms, the engineers and firemen on both trains leaping like the men. ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert
... neighbourhood. He would scarcely dare try a fifth attempt while the whole country was so aroused. You see Hillsborough has always been an attractive place to thieves. It is such an easy place to get away from,—three railroads within reach. A man would be pretty sure to be able to catch a passing freight train on one of them at almost any time, to say nothing of the increased ...
— The Burglar and the Blizzard • Alice Duer Miller
... and Russians. The men cheer as our train passes. A few kilometers further backed on to a siding, is a train of some twenty flatcars, each loaded with a touring car. Then we pass a battery of artillery on flatcars, the guns still garlanded with flowers; then a short freight train—six cars loaded with nothing but spare automobile tires—then a long train of heavy motor trucks, then more infantry trains, then an empty hospital train going back for another load, then a train of gasoline tank cars, more cheering ...
— The New York Times Current History of the European War, Vol 1, Issue 4, January 23, 1915 • Various
... the little lady had turned eastward, and presently she found herself close upon a railroad track over which a freight train was slowly passing. It was the Atchison road, and she watched with interest ...
— Peak and Prairie - From a Colorado Sketch-book • Anna Fuller
... o'clock another huge freight train rolled in, Ladrone's car was side-tracked and sent to the chute. For the last time he felt the jolt of the car. In a few minutes I had his car opened ...
— The Trail of the Goldseekers - A Record of Travel in Prose and Verse • Hamlin Garland
... A freight train goes by nearly a mile long. It is laden with coal, oil, iron. I can't believe that the soil is free. Coal and oil and iron have too much of it. I think of the banners borne in the campaign of 1860, when Baron Renfrew stood that night on the balcony of his hotel. He ...
— Children of the Market Place • Edgar Lee Masters
... minutes before Estelle and her husband came along, Estelle leading the way. The attendant opened the door of the car, and Estelle, followed by her husband, got in. They passed between Mr. George and Rollo, and stood there for a moment, looking about for a good seat. A freight train was slowly trundling by at this time on an adjoining track, so that what they said was not very audible; but still, Mr. George and Rollo could ...
— Rollo in Paris • Jacob Abbott
... pointed, far down on the left. "Can you make out that speck of light? It is the headlight of a freight train crawling up the range from Sleepy Cat. When the weather is right you can see the white head of Sleepy Cat Mountain from this spot. That train will wind around in sight of this knob for an hour, ...
— The Daughter of a Magnate • Frank H. Spearman
... this mode of conveyance is like being carried in angels' arms." As on the Samana-Santiago Road, the regular trains are mixed trains, that is, a freight and passenger together, usually looking like a freight train with a small passenger car attached. Except in unusually dull periods there is one daily train each way. The city of Santiago is about 600 feet above the level of the sea; from here the course is over a rich plain among tobacco farms and meadows full of cattle, for a distance of about ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich
... you should happen to want anything, miss,"—making a feint of arranging the shawls and satchels. "Should you like some dese things hung up? Well, dey'll be jus' as well in de chair. We's pretty late dis afternoon; more'n four hours behin' time. Ought to been into Albany 'fore dis. Freight train off de track jus' dis side o' Rochester, an' had to wait. Was you going ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells
... he picked himself up from the opposite seat on which he had been thrown by the violence of the shock. The door, fortunately, had been forced open by the concussion. Our two travellers jumped out on to the track. Here a scene of confusion met their view. They had run into a freight train which was coming from an opposite direction. Women and children were shrieking for help, mingled with the cries of those injured, with the loud shouts and vociferations of the employees, and those engaged in clearing the wreck and getting things into trim again; although ...
— Vellenaux - A Novel • Edmund William Forrest
... He come with a gang. They didn't allow white men to take em off so a white man come and stay round shy and get nigger man to work up a gang. We all come on a train to Memphis, then we got on a big boat. No, ma'am, we didn't come on no freight train. We got off at White Hall Landing. They got off all long the river. We worked on wages out here. Pa wanted to go to Mississippi. We went and made eighteen bales cotton and got cheated out of all we made. We never got a cent. The man cheated ...
— Slave Narratives: a Folk History of Slavery in the United States From Interviews with Former Slaves - Arkansas Narratives Part 3 • Works Projects Administration
... and one o'clock, I was put off of a freight train fur the second time in a place in the northern part of Tennessee, right near the Kentuckey line. I set down in a lumber yard near the railroad track, and when she started up agin I grabbed onto the iron ladder and swung myself aboard. But the brakeman was watching fur me, and clumb ...
— Danny's Own Story • Don Marquis
... the place were much excited at some of the things the players did, and when Paul "saved" Mr. Towne from being run down by a freight train that came along, one grizzled old man was so worked up, thinking it all real, that he wanted to run for a doctor, when Mr. Towne pretended ...
— The Moving Picture Girls Under the Palms - Or Lost in the Wilds of Florida • Laura Lee Hope
... distance in front the ground was furrowed up by the explosion. Quest replaced the instrument in his pocket, sprang through the opening and ran for the tower house. Behind him, on its way to New York, he could see a freight train coming along. He could hear, too, Red Gallagher's roar of anger. It was less than fifty yards, yet already, as he reached the shelter of the tower, the thunder of the freight sounded in Quest's ears. He glanced around. Red Gallagher and his mate were racing almost ...
— The Black Box • E. Phillips Oppenheim
... road was opened, the natives refused to give it patronage, many of them declaring that the old mode of travel, by horseback, was the best of all. During the first week after opening the Southwest Branch, the company ran a daily freight train each way. All the freight offered in that time was a bear and a keg of honey. Both were placed in the same car. The bear ate the honey, and the company was compelled to ...
— Camp-Fire and Cotton-Field • Thomas W. Knox
... out in search of my mother, and after walking more than half the distance I overtook an ox-team, and the driver allowed me to ride a part of the way. I reached the railroad town about night, and standing there was a freight train of the ...
— Tuskegee & Its People: Their Ideals and Achievements • Various
... to you to seek your assistance in dealing with a very grave situation which has arisen out of the demand of the employees of the railroads engaged in freight train service that they be granted an eight-hour working day, safeguarded by payment for an hour and a half of service for every hour ...
— President Wilson's Addresses • Woodrow Wilson
... necessary," and in a part of town which could be reached without starting out the night before. At 7.15 of a Monday morning we were off, with a feeling something akin to stage fright. Once we heard a hobo tell of the first time he ever tried to get on a freight train in the dark of night when it was moving. But we chewed our gum ...
— Working With the Working Woman • Cornelia Stratton Parker
... ferryboat talked about throwing him overboard. But they let him live if he would stay at the back end till everyone, including the deck hands, was safe off or behind something when the boat landed. Then he wandered off into the night and found a freight train. He didn't care where he went—just somewhere they ...
— Ma Pettengill • Harry Leon Wilson
... sound. This freighting business is most profitable. I think that the charge is three cents per pound from Denver to South Park, and there much of the freight is transferred to "pack-jacks" and carried up to the mines. A railroad, however, is contemplated. I breakfasted with the family after the freight train left, and instead of sitting down to gobble up the remains of a meal, they had a fresh table-cloth and hot food. The buckets are all polished oak, with polished brass bands; the kitchen utensils are bright as rubbing can make them; and, more wonderful still, the girls black ...
— A Lady's Life in the Rocky Mountains • Isabella L. Bird
... just right for an Urchin who has recently learned the fascination of walking on something raised above the ground, provided there is a curator near by to hold his hand. And then, as one walks away toward the South Street bridge an observant Urchin may spy the delightful spectacle of a freight train travelling apparently in midair. Some day, one hopes, all that fine tract of open space leading from the museum down to the railroad tracks may perhaps be beautified as a park or an addition to the University's quadrangle system. I don't know ...
— Pipefuls • Christopher Morley
... mandatory wire, Kent ran forward to the engine of the freight train and was shortly on his way again. But in the twenty-mile run to Gaston more time was lost by the lumbering freight locomotive, and it was twenty minutes past three o'clock when the county seat came in sight and Kent began to oscillate between two sharp-pointed ...
— The Grafters • Francis Lynde
... be an hour or more before we can hope to get there with our old local freight train," objected Ned. "They probably will be gone ...
— The Pony Rider Boys in the Ozarks • Frank Gee Patchin
... you are on a vacation, but the New York-Chicago Express gets there by staying on the track. The minute it starts climbing some interesting country lane after daisies and buttercups the coroners begin to gather and the claim agents flock together, and some slow but sure old freight train, plugging along on the next track but sticking to it, toots a couple of times and ...
— Goat-Feathers • Ellis Parker Butler
... switchman and started out to limber up the "III." I asked him to let me out on the main line, took a five-mile spin, and sidetracked for a freight train. While the man was unlocking the switch, I looked into the eyes and wondered what their owner was, or could be, or had been, to "Scar Faced" Hopkins, and—ran off the switch. Then I wondered if Hopkins was looking into those eyes when ...
— Danger Signals • John A. Hill and Jasper Ewing Brady
... far when the news came that a freight train was ditched a short distance up the road. Our train stopped, and the superintendents went to the wreck of the engine. Then I saw my chance and got up a foot race among the passengers. Meanwhile Billy opened up on a log as the contestants ...
— Forty Years a Gambler on the Mississippi • George H. Devol
... in the show, and were not sorry when it came to an end. They were among the first out, and hurried directly toward Mrs. Carson's house. In doing this they had to cross the railroad track, and here a passing freight train held them up. The freight came to a halt, and backed to take on some empties. Then it proceeded slowly on ...
— Out with Gun and Camera • Ralph Bonehill
... farm, taught a district school (made love to the big girls), run a threshing machine, cut bands, fed the machine and ran the engine. Have been a freight and passenger brakeman, fired and ran a locomotive; also a freight train conductor and check clerk in a freight house; worked on the section; have been a shot gun messenger for the Wells, Fargo Company. Have been with a circus, minstrels, farce comedy, burlesque and dramatic productions; ...
— Uncles Josh's Punkin Centre Stories • Cal Stewart
... redoubled his speed. His shoes were gone, his stockings hung in shreds from his ankles, and his feet were a mass of raw and bleeding flesh, pierced by hundreds of cactus thorns. He had hurried away on an Eastern-bound freight train to Deming, the next station, to rouse the citizens and help to raise a militia company, whose coming was expected in a few hours. And telegrams had been sent to Fort Bayard giving news of the outbreak and asking ...
— Emerson's Wife and Other Western Stories • Florence Finch Kelly
... extreme exhaustion, the heavy snow storm which was making the night doubly dark had so blocked the machinery of the semaphore that it refused to respond to the desperate efforts of the weary signal man, who heard a freight train approaching, and knew that unless it was flagged at once it would dash into the rear end of a passenger train, which was standing in sight of the signal box, with its locomotive disabled. Finally, ...
— My Native Land • James Cox
... long, empty freight train rattled cityward unnoticed, as John's regular breathing told off, faithfully as any timepiece, the fast lessening minutes which stood ...
— A Son of the City - A Story of Boy Life • Herman Gastrell Seely
... I got free passage on a freight train, and didn't sthop. It was in the Aist that I expected to ...
— Drift from Two Shores • Bret Harte
... Sponsilier and I had discussed the possibility of arousing the authorities at Glendive. Since it was in the neighborhood of one hundred miles from Powderville to the former point on the railroad, the herds would consume nearly a week in reaching there. A freight train was caught that afternoon, and within twenty-four hours after leaving the quarantine camp on the Powder River, we had opened headquarters at the Stock Exchange Saloon in Glendive. On arriving, I deposited one hundred dollars with the proprietor of that bar-room, with the ...
— The Outlet • Andy Adams
... dark, the conductor came back, shaking his head; a freight train ahead at Pajaro had been completely buried by a mountain of earth hurled ...
— Complete Story of the San Francisco Horror • Richard Linthicum
... change has taken place in the traffic with New Mexico in less than three-quarters of a century! In 1825 it was all carried on with one single annual caravan of prairie-schooners, and now there are four railroads running through the Rio Grande Valley, and one daily freight train of the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe into the town unloads more freight than was taken there in a whole year when the "commerce of the prairies" was at ...
— The Old Santa Fe Trail - The Story of a Great Highway • Henry Inman
... men led by the sheriff—the tame village street and the smug village faces ruddled by the light of bobbing lanterns, the mob flowing between the squatty rows of shops—had taken the organizer from his hotel, ridden him on a fence-rail, put him on a freight train, and warned ...
— Main Street • Sinclair Lewis
... A boy with a grievance, or a boy with a sore toe, or a boy with fear at his back, cannot fashion his conduct after the beautiful principles laid down in Mr. Herbert Spencer's "Data of Ethics." So when Jimmy Sears came to the freight train that blocked his flight, he darted down the track until he was out of sight of any possible pursuers in the street. He clambered breathlessly into a coal car, and snuggled down into a corner inside a little strip of shade, and panted ...
— The Court of Boyville • William Allen White
... first night upon a freight train, but it was not his last, for ahead of him was a strange and turbulent existence. He was going to the great city to join the circus, to be a part of that astonishing procession which annually parades ...
— Black Bruin - The Biography of a Bear • Clarence Hawkes
... car, souped-up car. bob, bobsled, bobsleigh^; cutter; double ripper, double runner [U.S.]; jumper, sled, sledge, sleigh, toboggan. train; accommodation train, passenger train, express trail, special train, corridor train, parliamentary train, luggage train, freight train, goods train; 1st class train, 2nd class train, 3rd class train, 1st class carriage, 2nd class carriage, 3rd class carriage, 1st class compartment, 2nd class compartment, 3rd class compartment; rolling stock; horse box, cattle truck; baggage car, express car, freight car, parlor car, ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget
... occurred just west of the creek. A fast east-bound freight train, double-headed, had left the track on the long curve around the hill, and when the wrecking train backed through Ten Shed Cut the sun streamed over the heaps of jammed and twisted cars strung all the way from the point of the curve to the foot of Smoky Hill. The crew of the train ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman
... is a narrow and prescribed manner of using electricity for motive power. The motor runs but one car—or one and a trailer, at most," said Tom. "As I have pointed out, the problem is to build a machine that will transmit power enough to draw the enormous weight of a loaded freight train, ...
— Tom Swift and his Electric Locomotive - or, Two Miles a Minute on the Rails • Victor Appleton
... Every street is inches deep in it, everything in town, including the minds of the inhabitants, is covered with it. As to heat—"Cincinnati Slim" put it in a nutshell even as we wandered in from the cattleyards where the freight train had dropped us in the small hours: "If ever hell gets full this'll do fine for ...
— Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras - Being the Random Notes of an Incurable Vagabond • Harry A. Franck
... and we started accordingly. But our train was belated by a freight train being ditched, so we did not reach our destination till six o'clock that night without a ...
— Twenty Years of Hus'ling • J. P. Johnston
... off across the fields to where the railroad tracks were located. Here was the very spot where Dave had been picked up years before. Not far off was a water tank, where the locomotives usually stopped for their supply. A long freight train was just slowing down. Many of the cars were empty and the ...
— Dave Porter at Star Ranch - Or, The Cowboy's Secret • Edward Stratemeyer
... on the other road," answered Frank, with a queer thrill all through him at the thought of what might happen if it was not. Both looked straight ahead as the last tree glided by, and the long track lay before them, with the freight train slowly coming down. For an instant, the boys ...
— Jack and Jill • Louisa May Alcott
... might put an end to all of his unhappiness was very simple. "I will get out of here, run away from home," he told himself. He knew that a local freight train passed through Winesburg at midnight and went on to Cleveland, where it arrived at dawn. He would steal a ride on the local and when he got to Cleveland would lose himself in the crowds there. He would get work in some shop and become friends with the other workmen and would be indistinguishable. ...
— Winesburg, Ohio • Sherwood Anderson
... ulster, for the wind was driving clouds of smoke and stinging dust and an occasional grimy snowflake out of the northwest. Then he sprang down from the sidewalk and made his way through the intervening bogs and, heedless of the shouts of the brakemen, over a freight train which was creaking its endless length across his path, to the ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster
... eager to see if this stone contains more X," he explained to Ned, "so I'm planning to fly straight home with this sample to analyze it. I want you to put the rest of the meteorite on a fast freight train and travel north ...
— Tom Swift and His Giant Telescope • Victor Appleton
... told," said young Lamotte, with a light laugh. "I rode a great many miles, and asked a great many useless questions. Yesterday, however, I learned that two men had boarded a freight train bound cityward, at daybreak, Sunday morning, at Blair, a little watering station, some fifteen miles from here. I could not get a very accurate description of them. They were below the medium size, I should judge, wearing loose-fitting dark gray garments, and soft hats, pulled ...
— The Diamond Coterie • Lawrence L. Lynch
... the tank, Hubbard had his twin shafts of silver under my car. We got a good start here, but our catch engine proved to be badly coaled and a poor steamer. Up to this time she had done fairly well, but after the first two hours she began to lose. Seeing no more of the freight train, I turned in, not a little pleased to think that Mr. Yank's headlight would not haunt me again that trip. I fell asleep, but woke again when the train stopped, probably at Vandalia. I had just begun to doze again when our engine let out a frightful scream for brakes. I knew ...
— The Last Spike - And Other Railroad Stories • Cy Warman
... explosion of sound under the decent person's window, and a hand-organ starts off with a jerk like a freight train on a down grade, that joggles a whole string of crashing notes. Then it gets down to work, and its harsh, high-pitched, metallic drone makes the street ring for a moment. Then it is temporarily drowned by a chorus of shrill, small ...
— Jersey Street and Jersey Lane - Urban and Suburban Sketches • H. C. Bunner
... this: A freight train, on a siding, had overrun a switch, and one of the cars encroached on the main line tracks. The passenger engine had "side-swiped" it, as the railroad term has it. That is, the engine had struck a glancing blow, and had been derailed. ...
— The Moving Picture Girls at Oak Farm - or, Queer Happenings While Taking Rural Plays • Laura Lee Hope
... embankments and cuttings on which nothing has yet had time to grow, and by the inordinate extent and number of the sidings to be seen everywhere. Baby trains, consisting of a locomotive and four short cars, dodder along two or three times a day, and if a freight train happens to be encountered, it will be found to be loaded ...
— The New York Times Current History: the European War, February, 1915 • Various
... great headlight of a freight train bearing slowly down into Green River from the wilderness. Green River is the end of a division, an epoch in every train's journey. Lanterns swung signals, the great dim thing slowed to its standstill by the coal chute, its locomotive moved away for a turn of repose, the successor backed steaming ...
— Lin McLean • Owen Wister
... form of an intense passion for an absolute stranger—a woman travelling with a theatrical company. He was like a sleeper who awakens suddenly and finds a scorching midday sun beating upon his eyes. A wrecked freight train upon the track detained for several hours the car in which they travelled. The passengers waived ceremony and conversed to pass the time, and Mr Irving learnt Berene's name, occupation and destination. He followed her for ...
— An Ambitious Man • Ella Wheeler Wilcox
... off at the spike hole, the bar would turn up like a serpent's head and if not seen in time it was liable to throw the train off the track and do damage. I was at Dearborn at one time when an accident, of this kind, happened to a freight train, a little west of the village. There was considerable property destroyed, barrels broken in pieces and flour strewed over the ground, but no ...
— The Bark Covered House • William Nowlin
... little ahead and I did not catch dad in the act of kicking open the throttle, but I heard something that sounded like a freight train wreck, and dad and the horse went by me like a horse race, only that horse was not on the ground half the time, and he didn't go straight ahead, but just lowered his head between his legs and jumped in the air and came down stifflegged and then jumped ...
— Peck's Bad Boy With the Cowboys • Hon. Geo. W. Peck
... A freight train was puffing into the siding at the Payson station. Bridge could hear the complaining brakes a mile away. It would be easy to leave the town and his dangerous companions far behind him; but even as the thought forced its way into his mind another obtruded itself ...
— The Oakdale Affair • Edgar Rice Burroughs
... a train go over into a canal and one coach lodge against a tree that was standing exactly in the right place to save it. And I've seen a passenger engine run by a signal and through a block and knock a single car out of a passing freight-train, at a crossing, and that car be the very one that the freight train's brakeman had just reached on his way to the caboose; just like somebody had timed it all, to the second, to kill him. And I've seen a whole wreck piled up, as high as a house, on top of a man, and the man ...
— The Sleuth of St. James's Square • Melville Davisson Post |
