During Dickinson’s life, trains represented a new expanding mode of rapid, reliable, and technologically advanced transportation in the United States. The poem’s exuberant tone matches the contemporary excitement over their possibilities. As Dickinson’s father helped bring a train line to Amherst, Dickinson also had a personal connection to trains. Before Dickinson was born, people began the work that’d make it possible to have trains across the United States. They surveyed the territory and created maps. By the time of Dickinson’s death, train lines connected the East Coast to the West Coast. They could “lap the Miles” and “lick the Valleys up” (Lines 1-2). The locomotives ran on steam, so they had to “feed [...] at Tanks” (Line 3), or load up water to serve as fuel for their journeys.

The US government helped finance the railroads, which made rail tycoons rich enough to be nicknamed robber barons. Conversely, the people who actually built the railroads faced brutality and death from the poor labor conditions. These workers included enslaved people, formerly enslaved people, Indigenous people, Mexican laborers, and Chinese migrants, and European immigrants. The European immigrants received higher pay, but no one benefited from the emphasis on speed instead of safety.