The Railroad Cars are Coming
Channel: Stephen Griffith
Date: 2020-10-25

Day 221 of the American Songbag Stay-at-Home Series

Sandburg writes: "Federal government experiments with camels in the 1850's were no go. The hope was that caravans of dromedaries might carry freight traffic from New Orleans to the west coast. . . . Horse, mule, burro, were good overland freighters. But the box car was better; it gave cruel desert spaces a friendly and human look. ... As the work gangs spiked rails to ties and the eastern and western gangs came closer, this song arose, one verse with jubilation, one with laughter at the prairie dog, the rattlesnake and owl having their dominion of the desert interrupted. . . . We have this text and tune from Margery K. Forsythe of Chicago, who learned it from her pioneer mother." 

[from The Traditional Ballad Index] The first Transcontinental Railroad in the United States was the Central Pacific, completed in Utah in May 1860. This line went from Chicago to Omaha through Nebraska, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada on its way to Sacramento and San Francisco.

But it cannot be the line referred to, since the song describes travelling through New Mexico.

Two major transcontinental lines went through the southern states. The Southern Pacific went from New Orleans though Houston, San Antonio, and El Paso to Los Angeles. This might be the reference, but this line barely touches New Mexico.

The Santa Fe railroad (or the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe) fits much better: Starting from Saint Louis as the Missouri Pacific, it passed through Kansas City and then headed west and south through Kansas, a corner of Colorado, and New Mexico, through Santa Fe and Albuquerque to Los Angeles.The Santa Fe line makes sense in another way: It replaced the old Santa Fe trail, making its opening welcome even to the animals (since they didn't have to travel it). The line reached Santa Fe in 1880, meaning that its construction was still part of living memory when Sandburg was collecting songs.