“Life’s Railway to Heaven” is a gospel song of the early 1890s, known in bluegrass mostly by its first line, “Life Is Like a Mountain Railway” (hymnals print “Railroad”). The words are credited to M. E. Abbey, a Baptist minister in Georgia, and the music to Charles Davis Tillman, born in Tallassee, Alabama, in 1861, who ran a church-music publishing business in Atlanta. Tillman set Abbey’s text to music in 1890; Hymnary.org dates the words to 1891. Abbey had drawn on an earlier poem, “The Faithful Engineer,” by the songwriter Will S. Hays.
The song keeps to one image from start to finish. Life is a run over a mountain line, and the believer is the engineer who must bring the train through “from the cradle to the grave,” watching the curves, the fills and the tunnels, a hand on the throttle and an eye on the rail. In the middle verses printed in the hymnals, Christ is the conductor, and trials come as steep grades and storms that could ditch the train. In the last verse the train rolls across a trestle spanning “Jordan’s swelling tide” and glides into the Union Depot, where the Superintendent, “God the Father, God the Son,” greets the traveller as a weary pilgrim come home. The refrain asks the Saviour to guide the singers to “the blissful shore.” The Rice Brothers’ 1989 version keeps just the first and last verses.
The earliest recording SecondHandSongs lists is by Edward Allen and Charles Hart, made for Edison on 21 November 1917 and issued in March 1918; George Reneau recorded it on 21 April 1924. Tillman wrote the tune in 3/4 time. A version in 4/4 also spread after Patsy Cline recorded one in 1959; Willie Nelson’s voice was later dubbed onto her record to make a duet.
Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys recorded it on 19 March 1958 at Bradley Film & Recording in Nashville, for the gospel album I Saw the Light (Decca DL 8769, August 1958); it also led off a Decca EP (ED 2610). Monroe sang lead on the verses and tenor on the chorus, with Edd Mayfield (guitar) singing the chorus lead, Kenny Baker baritone and Culley Holt bass. Holt also played bass, and Owen Bradley played organ. The Greenbriar Boys put it on their first Vanguard album (VRS 9104, May 1962), with John Herald singing lead. The Seldom Scene included it on Act Four (Sugar Hill SH 3709, 1979), and the Rice Brothers on The Rice Brothers (Rounder 0256, 1989), singing it with Tony and Larry Rice, Bill Emerson and Jon Carroll.
