Strap Iron

He elaborated: "Never before were such crazy cars— passenger, baggage, mail, coal, box, platform, all and every sort wabbling on the jumping strap-iron—used for hauling good soldiers." ❋ DOUGLAS SOUTHALL FREEMAN (2001)

The sinew wrappings held the strap-iron head, wetted as they now were with blood. ❋ Emerson Hough (1890)

She held up an Indian arrow, its strap-iron head bent over at right angles. ❋ Emerson Hough (1890)

Back from the levee a block or two the double lines of strap-iron stretched over a wooden causeway between parallel wet ditches gave evidence of some kind of a railway, on which, at rare intervals, jogged a sleepy mule with a sleepier driver and a musty old rattle-trap of a car, -- a car butting up against the animal's lazy hocks and rousing him occasionally to ringing and retaliatory kicks. ❋ Charles King (1888)

"strap-iron," always necessary, was rudely and slowly hammered out on an anvil. ❋ James W. Steele (N/A)

By 1850, Robert L. Stevens’s development of all-iron rails in place of wooden rails with a strap-iron surface had been adopted everywhere—and in form and proportion it is still in use today. ❋ STEPHEN E. AMBROSE (2000)

Gimme pole riffles with a little strap-iron on the top and if you can't ketch it with that you can't ketch it with nothin '. " ❋ Caroline Lockhart (1916)