They went where the train went.  Clutching tickets.  A suitcase tied with rope.  To a cafe in Norfolk.  A government job in D.C. A season of day’s work in the Bronx.  A school year in Brooklyn.  The Philadelphia docks.  The Atlantic Coast Line took them.  It brought them back.  It took them again.

ACL passenger route map, circa 1900.

A cousin married a railroad man.  Twice a week, Mama Sarah in Wilson handed him up a shoebox packed with cornbread and ham and sweet potatoes.  At Dudley, he threw the package off the train to another cousin standing on the ditch bank.  And thus Grandpa Lewis and Grandma Mag were fed.