Train songs are everywhere in bluegrass, and the big ones get sung at every jam. These 22 sit a layer below that. Some are Delmore Brothers numbers from the boogie era. Some are Norman Blake songs that took the railroad somewhere quieter and stranger. There’s a Jean Ritchie lament about the L&N pulling out of coal country, a Louvin Brothers piece about Bald Knob Arkansas, and a handful of bluegrass-era originals from Rhonda Vincent, Ricky Skaggs, and Clyde Moody. They share the same iconography as the standards — whistles, smoke, leaving and not coming back — but most of them get passed over for the ones everyone already knows.

Use this as a jam-repertoire expander or a listening list. Pick two or three that catch your ear and learn them properly. Each song’s page on Picker’s Guide has chord charts, lyrics, recordings to study, and the song’s history.