Logging Company Railroad in Go Down, Moses (Location)

The railroad from Hoke's into the woods is a branch or "spur-line" (306), "thirty miles" long, built to allow the company that is logging the Big Woods to carry the timber out from "the cutting" area to the saw mill (303). Ike and Boon use it to travel from the camp to the main rail line to Memphis. In the final section of "The Bear," Ike reflects at length on the history of this line, how "harmless" it seemed when it was first built through the "unaxed wilderness" (304) - "the diminutive locomotive and its shrill peanut-parcher whistle" (304) - and how ominous it seems as the company prepares to carry almost the entire woods away on it.