Rail·road Rail·way n.
 1. A road or way consisting of one or more parallel series of iron or steel rails, patterned and adjusted to be tracks for the wheels of vehicles, and suitably supported on a bed or substructure.
 Note: ☞ The modern railroad is a development and adaptation of the older tramway.
 2. The road, track, etc., with all the lands, buildings, rolling stock, franchises, etc., pertaining to them and constituting one property; as, a certain railroad has been put into the hands of a receiver.
 Note: ☞ Railway is the commoner word in England; railroad the commoner word in the United States.
 Note: ☞ In the following and similar phrases railroad and railway are used interchangeably: --
 Atmospheric railway, Elevated railway, etc. See under Atmospheric, Elevated, etc.
 Cable railway. See Cable road, under Cable.
 Ferry railway, a submerged track on which an elevated platform runs, for carrying a train of cars across a water course.
 Gravity railway, a railway, in a hilly country, on which the cars run by gravity down gentle slopes for long distances after having been hauled up steep inclines to an elevated point by stationary engines.
 Railway brake, a brake used in stopping railway cars or locomotives.
 Railway car, a large, heavy vehicle with flanged wheels fitted for running on a railway. [U.S.]
 Railway carriage, a railway passenger car. [Eng.]
 Railway scale, a platform scale bearing a track which forms part of the line of a railway, for weighing loaded cars.
 Railway slide. See Transfer table, under Transfer.
 Railway spine Med., an abnormal condition due to severe concussion of the spinal cord, such as occurs in railroad accidents. It is characterized by ataxia and other disturbances of muscular function, sensory disorders, pain in the back, impairment of general health, and cerebral disturbance, -- the symptoms often not developing till some months after the injury.
 Underground railroad Underground railway. (a) A railroad or railway running through a tunnel, as beneath the streets of a city. (b) Formerly, a system of cooperation among certain active antislavery people in the United States prior to 1866, by which fugitive slaves were secretly helped to reach Canada.
 Note: [In the latter sense railroad, and not railway, was usually used.] “Their house was a principal entrepôt of the underground railroad.” --W. D. Howells.

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 Trans·fer n.
 1. The act of transferring, or the state of being transferred; the removal or conveyance of a thing from one place or person to another.
 2. Law The conveyance of right, title, or property, either real or personal, from one person to another, whether by sale, by gift, or otherwise.
    I shall here only consider it as a transfer of property.   --Burke.
 3. That which is transferred. Specifically: --
 (a) A picture, or the like, removed from one body or ground to another, as from wood to canvas, or from one piece of canvas to another.
 (b) A drawing or writing printed off from one surface on another, as in ceramics and in many decorative arts.
 (c) Mil. A soldier removed from one troop, or body of troops, and placed in another.
 4. Med. A pathological process by virtue of which a unilateral morbid condition on being abolished on one side of the body makes its appearance in the corresponding region upon the other side.
 Transfer day, one of the days fixed by the Bank of England for the transfer, free of charge, of bank stock and government funds. These days are the first five business days in the week before three o'clock.  Transfers may be made on Saturdays on payment of a fee of 2s. 6d. --Bithell.
 Transfer office, an office or department where transfers of stocks, etc., are made.
 Transfer paper, a prepared paper used by draughtsmen, engravers, lithographers, etc., for transferring impressions.
 Transfer table. Railroad Same as Traverse table. See under Traverse.

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