"Woody Guthrie taught me how to hitchhike and how to ride freight trains.

[elleng]

You don’t get on a freight when it’s in the station - the railroad bulls will kick you off. You go about 100 yards or maybe 200 yards outside to where the train is just picking up speed and you can trot alongside it. You throw your banjo in an empty car, and then you throw yourself in. And you then might go 200 or 300 miles before you stop. Then I would knock on back doors and say, ‘Can I do a little work for a meal?’ Or I’d sing in a saloon for a few quarters. In six months I saw the country like I never would have seen it otherwise.” - Pete Seeger

Pete Seeger had a fascination with trains.

So did his buddies, Fred Hellerman, Ronnie Gilbert, and Lee Hays a.k.a. The Weavers. .

“We were four very politically motivated people, interested in doing what we could for the music we loved and for social action. Part of social action at that time was to raise the consciousness of any audience to folk music, just to the idea that these songs existed." - Ronnie Gilbert, recalling her time with The Weavers

In the video below, the Weavers sing a rousing rendition of a historical railroad tune - "Paddy Works on the Railway".
When the first steam locomotive arrived from England on May 13, 1829, many Americans were skeptical that the "iron horse" was anything more than a novelty. However, by May 10, 1869 public opinion had changed considerably as the first transcontinental railroad line was completed in Promontory, Utah.

For the first time, people and freight could move swiftly and inexpensively across nearly 2,000 miles of western mountains, deserts, and plains. At the end of the nineteenth century, five major transcontinental railroads connected the East and West coasts, and thousands of miles of tracks criss-crossed the country. Much of the work laying those tracks was done by African-American, Chinese, and Irish laborers.

Many of the principal singers in labor forces, from the lumber camps to the canals and railroads, were Irish. Most of the songs they sang to accompany their work have since been lost. Some were beloved songs from Ireland, some were adaptations of those songs, and some were new songs born of Irish singing traditions. “Paddy Works on the Railway”, also known as “Paddy Works on the Erie” or “Fi-Li-Mi-Oo-Re-Oo-Re-Ay”, belongs in one of the latter two categories.

Click the link below and join in on the chorus!
Fi-Li-Mi-Oo-Re-Oo-Re-Ay
Fi-Li-Mi-Oo-Re-Oo-Re-Ay
Fi-Li-Mi-Oo-Re-Oo-Re-Ay
To work upon the railway

[yonder]

1. K&R for respect.

[brush]

2. Thank you. Any sources of the gandy dancer work songs?

[highplainsdem]

3. Thanks for posting this!

[tirebiter]

4. I used to jump trains up in Oregon

I lived on a street on Salem that had tracks down the center. Train would slow to 15 mph. I could ride it up to Portland then Seattle or south! along the Willamette.