“This Train,” also known as “This Train Is Bound for Glory,” is a traditional African American gospel song. It was recorded as early as the 1920s by jubilee quartets, and it became widely known in the late 1930s through the singer and guitarist Sister Rosetta Tharpe.
The song pictures a train bound for heaven and names who may ride it: the holy and the righteous, but not gamblers, liars, or other sinners. It is a song of joyful sorting, the gospel train carrying the faithful home.
The song’s lift and rhythm carried it into folk and bluegrass, and it gave Woody Guthrie the title of his autobiography.
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