Three C Railroad

DESCRIPTION: Hammer song. "Oh, baby, Uh! what you gwine to do? Uh! Three C railroad, Uh! done run through! Uh!" "My and my partner, him and me!" "Oh, baby, what you gwine to do? Seaboard Air-line (or other train) done run through."
AUTHOR: unknown
EARLIEST DATE: 1925 (Scarborough)
KEYWORDS: railroading work
FOUND IN: US
REFERENCES (1 citation):
Scarborough-OnTheTrailOfNegroFolkSongs, pp. 216-217, "Work-Song" (1 text, 1 tune)
NOTES [163 words]: There are hints of this in some of Lead Belly's songs. But that may just be the common stuff of all railroad work songs.
According to Aaron E. Klein, Encyclopedia of North American Railroads, Bison Books, 1985 (I use the 1987 printing), although the ancestor of the Seaboard Air Lie was founded in 1832, that line was known as the Portsmouth and Roanoake. By 1900 the line extended from Portsmouth, Virginia, through Weldon, North Carolina, on to Atlanta, Georgia, and was informally known as the Seaboard Air Line. In 1900, the Florida Central and Peninsular Railroad was added to the network, and the name "Seaboard Air Line" became official. The line went bankrupt some decades later, but survived, and after a series of mergers, the line became the Seaboard Coast Line in 1967. In the early 1980s, the company became part of the CSX Corporation, and the "Seaboard" name disappeared, at least as a corporate title; a "Seaboard System Railroad" still existed after that. - RBW
Last updated in version 6.5
File: ScNF216C

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