ChatterBank1 min ago
Railroading
5 Answers
What's the origin of the American expression 'to railroad' [somebody] ? What's it to do with a railroad ?
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No best answer has yet been selected by fredpuli47. Once a best answer has been selected, it will be shown here.
For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.An American friend told me that in the early days of the US railroads that certain undesirable people were actually exiled from towns, not because they were criminals, but had rather high hopes and exceedingly low morals. Therefore their influence or behaviour, very often towards the young, was eventually tolerated no more and they were asked (told) to leave the town. Some were even tied up and thrown onto a train, very often in a cattle truck. If they came back, life was made very difficult for them, so many chose to start their new lives elsewhere. I suspect also that many were itinerant types anyway.
I wonder whether Rcc above is thinking of the idea of someone being "run out of town on a rail", a punishment often associated with tarring and feathering. This...ie banishment by being carried astride a wooden rail to the edge of town and advised never to darken its doorways again...was sometimes meted out to miscreants.
I give totterdown three stars because that was my own ,pure guess at, the answer. It's flattering to find that a guess is born out by some evidence! LOL
We don't have 'to railway'. Our railway companies had the more genteel weapon of an Act of Parliament for each and every enterprise.That enabled them to do officially, with the full force of Parliamentary democracy (!), what American railroads might do by less 'respectable' means !
We don't have 'to railway'. Our railway companies had the more genteel weapon of an Act of Parliament for each and every enterprise.That enabled them to do officially, with the full force of Parliamentary democracy (!), what American railroads might do by less 'respectable' means !