Train Your Mind Well
Sunday
Need to “let off (or blow off) some steam”? So did early locomotives when their boilers built up to dangerous pressures, hence the safety valve and origin of this term.
Monday
Sidetracks are where trains get diverted off the main line for whatever reason, and also the origin of the term for a diversion from a human goal.
Tuesday
The term “Hell on Wheels” has railroad origins, and referred to the transient, moving towns that followed the westbound construction of the US railroad, attracting business from the young railroad workers with saloons, gambling, and brothels.
Wednesday
While we now think of a “double header” as two consecutive baseball games, it previously referred to a two-engine train. That was not its first usage, though, since before that a double header was a type of firework.
Thursday
To be “railroaded” is to be hastily forced into an agreement or pushed through a process. This may refer to the speed of this new form of travel, the way early railroads were hurriedly and doggedly completed, or how they were sometimes built with minimum regard for private claims to the land they were built on.
“The Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins” by Robert Hendrickson (Facts on File, New York, 1997).
Friday
Bumpers were on trains before cars, and “bumper to bumper” was not a traffic jam but the recommended way to efficiently store train cars.
Saturday
About 150 years before modern DJs spun and scratched and spun on record turntables, trains spun on the original turntables. These huge devices moved trains onto the right track, and are still in use today.