I listened to The Wabash Cannonball yesterday. It includes these words:
What is a “combination”, as used in this context?
As I understand it, the Wabash Cannonball in the song refers to a (fictional) express service, and “combination” referred to the usual configuration of the train on that service (probably cars for passengers, mail, and freight).
I don’t believe that was the commonly used definition of those times. There’s an actual railroad term called a “combine” or a “combination”, but that would refer to a car that would carry both passengers and their luggage. I think people just took various liberties with an old folk song to make the lyrics flow.
Okay, that sounds like it’s not a particularly specific railroad jargon, at least as used there. I was guessing that maybe it referred to the particular combination of locomotives when used on a train with multiple locomotives.
(Note, BTW, that according to Wikipedia, The Wabash Cannonball was a fictional train that didn’t really exist. The real-life Wabash Cannonball came later, named after the song.)
Close. Cars and locomotive, perhaps more than one locomotive.
I made an edit to make it clear that’s what I meant. The Cannonball would have been the fictional service, and the “combination” would have been the fictional train itself.
The internet rabbit-hole of the Wabash Cannonball is quite deep. I suggest just taking it at face value as a fun song.
Well, it is that. It hadn’t occurred to me that there’s an internet rabbit-hole about it. (Do you mean a deep well of on-line lore of unverifiable authenticity?) All’s I did was listen to the Roy Acuff and Johnny Cash renditions and read the Wiki article.
BTW, Johnny Cash covered another train song, Texas 1947 which apparently tells a true story of the day the people of a small Texas town saw their first-ever diesel streamliner blow through.
Texas 1947 being written by the venerable Guy Clark. It was autobiographical, for the most part. The small Texas town was Monahans, Texas, where Mr. Clark was born and grew up (to his teens, anyway). The first line in the song is “Being six years old, I had seen some trains before…” and later states that “…it’s a late afternoon on a hot Texas day…” which creates a bit of a problem with the song’s title and its autobiographical nature.
You see, Guy Clark was born on November 6, 1941, so for him to be six years old on a hot Texas day I figure it would have had to be 1948. Yes, Monahans is in Southwest Texas but by November, the edge is off the heat and would be highly unlikely to reach a high temperature over 90F (an arbitrary limit of what a Texan living in Monahans might call “Hot”). So, in my mind, it should either be titled Texas 1948 or the first line should be “Being five years old.”
Now, I first heard this song in the fall of 1976 (Released in 1975) at my brother’s apartment in Chattanooga. I don’t remember when I discovered when Guy Clark was born, but I’m sure I found it on the internet, so late 1990s to early 2000’s. It would have been shortly after that that I would have figured the math and climate issues (I was living in Houston, Tx at the time), but I do remember telling myself that if I ever got to talk to him, I’d have to ask him about it.
As fate would have it, I got the chance in 2007. I was at a concert with my wife and we were chosen at random to “meet the artists back-stage after the show” (a characteristic of this particular venue was they would pull one stub at the end of the show for this). Unfortunately, I chickened-out! One of the regrets of my life (OK, not a big one). I was thinking that this had became one of his signature songs and that he would often talk about the autobiographical nature of it. I was afraid he might take it as my trying to say he was lying about his life, or couldn’t do math simple enough for a six-year-old. So, I just shook his hand, got my picture taken, got a free CD (which was superfluous as I already had all of them) and then went home.
Guy Clark passed away in 2016, so now I’ll never know.
Questioning a celebrity?
Johnny Cash told this story at a concert I once attended: A fan once asked him: If you shot a man in Reno, whatcha doing in prison in Folsom, California?
Yes, like many folk songs there’s a deep well of conflicting and non-authoritative information about what the right lyrics are supposed to be, and what they’re supposed to mean, and the song itself has mutated considerably from version to version.
At some point I just had to throw in the towel and accept that it’s a fun song about a train that’s legendary to hoboes, and that each singer makes of it whatever they feel like making it. As would be fitting for hobo art.
It’s $20, same as in town.
A Combination is railroad slang for multiple engines.
Though I do confess I cannot cite a source.
I’m not a railroad professional, but I’ve been a train fan for most of my life. As others have noted, if “combination” is an actual railroading term, it doesn’t seem to be widely used – the term “consist” for a series of locomotives (and/or cars) is more typical.
My suspicion is that the writer of the song (who may or may not have been a train expert) used “combination” because it fit the meter of the song.
I was just going to say that; you beat me by 30 minutes. 
Since we are on about a train song, let me throw The Orange Blossom Special out there.
Orange Blossom Special like you never imagined! Mark O'Connor & the Boston Pops - YouTube - a slightly different version.
BTW, Johnny cash covered this, too.
Everybody’s got a folk song about a train. (Eddie from Ohio’s “Train Song”)