Railroads


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rail·road

(rāl′rōd′)
n.
1. A road composed of parallel steel rails supported by ties and providing a track for locomotive-drawn trains or other wheeled vehicles.
2. A system of railroad track, together with the land, stations, rolling stock, and other related property under one management.
v. rail·road·ed, rail·road·ing, rail·roads
v.tr.
1. To transport by railroad.
2. To supply (an area) with railroads.
3. Informal
a. To rush or push (something) through quickly in order to prevent careful consideration and possible criticism or obstruction: railroad a special-interest bill through Congress.
b. To convict (an accused person) without a fair trial or on trumped-up charges.
v.intr.
To work for a railroad company.
rail′road′er n.
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright © 2016 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Railroads

See also travel; vehicles

a mock classical term for enthusiasm about railroads. — ferroequinologist, n.
a device for recording the speed of locomotives and the time, place, and length of all their stops.
an abnormal fear of railroads or of traveling on trains.
an obsession with railroad travel.
-Ologies & -Isms. Copyright 2008 The Gale Group, Inc. All rights reserved.
References in classic literature ?
They advocated government ownership of such trusts as the railroads and telegraphs, and excessive income taxes, graduated with ferocity, to destroy large accumulations.
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They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at; as railroads lead to Boston or New York.
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"I went hobbling for a year, and I got back at the railroads. Leaving out the little things, I came across the Sierras in the summer and touched a match to the snow-sheds.
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All the head lines of railroads in the States were joined by flying rails; and on all the platforms, lined with the same flags, and decorated with the same ornaments, were tables laid and all served alike.
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In the operation of trains, the railroads have waited thirty years before they dared to trust the telephone, just as they waited fifteen years before they dared to trust the telegraph.
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It interested me much to learn that by the public spirit of some of the inhabitants a railroad has recently been established between this populous and flourishing town and the Celestial City.
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I'm a railroad man and I've been in the tropics a lot.
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The railroad which ran through this section ascended from the south-west to the north-west by Great Island, Columbus, an important Nebraska town, Schuyler, and Fremont, to Omaha.
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You are in the hands of officials who zealously study your welfare and your interest, instead of turning their talents to the invention of new methods of discommoding and snubbing you, as is very often the main employment of that exceedingly self-satisfied monarch, the railroad conductor of America.
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Within the car there was the usual interior life of the railroad, offering little to the observation of other passengers, but full of novelty for this pair of strangely enfranchised prisoners.
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A man stood upon a railroad bridge in northern Alabama, looking down into the swift water twenty feet below.
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He slept in the office that was unspeakably dirty and dined at Biff Carter's lunch room in a small frame building opposite the railroad station.
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