Read "Back Home" by Irvin S. Cobb online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
ONE behind the other, three short sections of a special came sliding into the yard sidings below the depot.
The cars clanked their drawheads together like manacles, as they were chivied and bullied and shoved about by a regular chain-gang boss of a switch engine. Some of the cars were ordinary box cars, just the plain galley slaves of commerce, but painted a uniform blue and provided with barred gratings; some were flat cars laden with huge wheeled burdens hooded under tarpaulins; and a few were sleeping cars that had been a bright yellow at the beginning of the season, with flaring red lettering down the sides, but now were faded to a shabby saffron.