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Main line   /meɪn laɪn/   Listen
Main line

noun
1.
The principal route of a transportation system.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Main line" Quotes from Famous Books



... hundred, and his heart choked with a feeling of despair even as he pulled the trigger for his first shot. He had seen the effect of Olaf's shot, and following the Swede's instructions aimed for his man in the nearest group behind the main line. He did not instantly see the result, as a puff of smoke shut out his vision, but a moment later, aiming again, he saw a dark blotch left in the snow. From his end of the crevice Olaf had seen the man go down, and he grunted his ...
— The Golden Snare • James Oliver Curwood

... for you! The kid was runnin' true to form and stickin' to the main line. No side issues for him! Pop might be a big man, and all that; but his size didn't cut much ice alongside of the new-shoes prospect. Things was beginnin' to look squally, and Mrs. Piddie's mouth corners was saggin' some, when ...
— Torchy • Sewell Ford

... are of very great promise. Commencing in latitude 39 deg. 30 min. (see Mattoon on the Branch, and Assumption on the Main Line), the Company owns thousands of acres well adapted to the perfection of this fibre. A settler having a family of young children, can turn their youthful labor to a most profitable account in the growth ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... Tamar by a great bridge to Saltash in Cornwall. Branches serve Torquay and other seaside resorts of the south coast; and among other branches are those from Taunton to Barnstaple and from Plymouth northward to Tavistock and Launceston. The main line of the London & South-Western railway between Exeter and Plymouth skirts the north and west of Dartmoor by Okehampton and Tavistock. A branch from Yeoford serves Barnstaple, Ilfracombe, Bideford and Torrington, while the Lynton & Barnstaple and the Bideford, Westward Ho & Appledore lines ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 3 - "Destructors" to "Diameter" • Various

... in many of Van Dyck's works. There is a tradition that the original was Rubens's gift to the painter when he set out for Italy. Van Dyck has built his picture on a diagonal plan, such as the older painter Rubens often used. The main line of the composition runs from the head of the man in the upper left corner, to the beggar in the lower right corner. The lifted sword and the falling mantle form the connecting lines across ...
— Van Dyck - A Collection Of Fifteen Pictures And A Portrait Of The - Painter With Introduction And Interpretation • Estelle M. Hurll

... kitchen door banging open and shut as the gusts of wind caught it. The fire licked as close as burned ground and rocky creek bed would let it, and the flames which had stayed behind to eat the spare gleanings died, while the main line raged on up the hillside and disappeared in a huge, curling wave of smoke. The stacks burned down to blackened, smoldering butts. The willows next the spring, and the chokecherries and wild currants withered in the heat and waved charred, naked arms impotently ...
— Lonesome Land • B. M. Bower

... was the "opening of a notebook for facts in relation to the origin of species" in 1837, two years before the publication of his Journal. From the very commencement of his literary and scientific work, a rule rigidly adhered to was that of interspersing his main line of thought and research by reading books touching on widely diverging subjects; and it was thus, no doubt, that during October, 1838, he read "for amusement" Malthus's "Essay on Population"; not, as he himself affirms, with ...
— Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Marchant

... corn-fields and other plowed fields soon became ankle deep with mud. Nevertheless we pressed forward continuously. If we encountered the enemy in any considerable force, the skirmish line gradually slackened their progress until the main line came up with them. Artillery was brought forward and fired advancing along the road. In this manner we kept up an almost continuous advance, our dead and wounded being cared for by those in our rear. By night-fall we had made an advance of nearly eight miles, to Stewart's ...
— Personal recollections and experiences concerning the Battle of Stone River • Milo S. Hascall

... very much indeed. After a fall of three inches of rain in an hour it was obliged to do something. It topped its bank and joined the flood water that was hemmed between two low hills just where the embankment of the Colliery main line crossed. When a large part of a rain-fed river, and a few acres of flood-water, made a dead set for a nine-foot culvert, the culvert may spout its finest, but the water cannot all get out. The Manager pranced upon one leg with excitement, and his language ...
— Indian Tales • Rudyard Kipling

... and toward that end was studying for the pulpit. She is now the mother of several children, the most peaceful and unorative woman I know. You see, humanity goes whirring over various side-tracks, thinking them to be the main line, till fate puts its peculiar but happy hand to the switch. Scharfenstein had been plugging away over rusty rails and grass-grown ...
— The Princess Elopes • Harold MacGrath

... Roderick Ban, VII. of Redcastle, born there in 1751. He served in Lord Macleod's Regiment (now 71st Highlanders), and was wounded at Gibraltar. His descendants, since the death of Roderick, IX. of Redcastle in 1798 without issue, carried on also the representation of the main line of that family. He married Mary, daughter of the Rev. Colin Mackenzie, minister of Fodderty, with ...
— History Of The Mackenzies • Alexander Mackenzie

... the vicinity of the lake and led up into the woods and across several deep ravines. It also crossed the railroad track, for there was a spur of the main line which came down to Glen Arbor—this spur being the only railroad ...
— The Young Bridge-Tender - or, Ralph Nelson's Upward Struggle • Arthur M. Winfield

... main line train that had brought them from Muirtown disappear in the distance, and then broke into groups to discuss the cattle sale at leisure, while Peter, the factotum of the little Kildrummie branch, drove his way through their midst with offensive pieces of luggage, and abused them by name ...
— Beside the Bonnie Brier Bush • Ian Maclaren

... one particularly valuable idea, the idea of an association of people to guarantee the welfare of their children in common. I will follow that a little, though it takes me away from my main line of thought. It seems to me that such an association might be found in many cases a practicable way of easing the conflict that so many men and women experience, between their individual public service and their duty to their own ...
— First and Last Things • H. G. Wells

... the valley the hundred-yard interspace was bridged by a hastily-constructed spur track starting from a switch on the Colorado and Grand River main line, and crossing the Utah right of way at a broad angle. On this spur, at its point of intersection with the new line, stood a heavy locomotive, steam up, and manned in every inch of its standing-room ...
— A Fool For Love • Francis Lynde

... The reason was this. The ground behind the ridge was occupied by swampy rice fields, and the enemy could only retire very slowly over it. Their safe line of retreat lay up the spur, and on to the main line of hills. They were thus formed with their line of retreat in prolongation of their front. This is, of course, tactically one of the worst situations that people can ...
— The Story of the Malakand Field Force • Sir Winston S. Churchill

... of which Darius was encamped. And here Darius resolved to fight. He threw across the river thirty thousand cavalry and twenty thousand infantry, to insure the undisturbed formation of his main force. His main line was composed of ninety thousand hoplites, of which thirty thousand were Greek in the centre. On the mountain to his left, he posted twenty thousand, to act against the right wing of the Macedonian army. He then recalled ...
— Ancient States and Empires • John Lord

... advance on the Irish right centre, having previously ascertained that the bog was passable. The defenders, after discharging their fire, gradually drew the Williamites after them by an almost imperceptible retreat, until they had them face to face with their main line. Then the Irish cavalry charged with irresistible valour, and the English were thrown into total disorder. St. Ruth, proud of the success of his strategies and the valour of his men, exclaimed, "Le jour est a nous, mes enfans." ...
— An Illustrated History of Ireland from AD 400 to 1800 • Mary Frances Cusack

... The main line, however, has been supplied from the remaining four, all of which turn off either from the one lateral railroad from Przemysl to Jaslo or from the dirt road between Jaslo and Sanok, and run south to the various passes. As this latter road simply loops the railroad between these two ...
— New York Times Current History; The European War, Vol 2, No. 3, June, 1915 - April-September, 1915 • Various

... the 30th May, having surrounded the city with his own and the Imperialist troops, he took a small force by water to a point on the main line of communication between Quinsan and Soo-chow, only defended by a weak stockade, which was easily taken. Gordon then took the celebrated little steamer the Hyson, and went towards Soo-chow. Meeting a large force of the enemy on the ...
— General Gordon - A Christian Hero • Seton Churchill

... will be along the Ganges till we come to Luckieserai Junction, where the loop-line falls into the main line," the ...
— Across India - Or, Live Boys in the Far East • Oliver Optic

... the points are continued as the outer rails of the main and branch lines. The inner rails come to a sharp V-point, and to the left of this are the two short rails which, by means of shifting portions, decide the direction of a train's travel. In Fig. 98 the main line is open; in Fig. 99, the branch. The shifting parts are kept properly spaced by cross ...
— How it Works • Archibald Williams

... smoke marked the position of Lewes. Immediately at our feet there lay a rolling plain of heather, with the long, vivid green stretches of the Crowborough golf course, all dotted with the players. A little to the south, through an opening in the woods, we could see a section of the main line from London to Brighton. In the immediate foreground, under our very noses, was a small enclosed yard, in which stood the car which had ...
— The Poison Belt • Arthur Conan Doyle

... I was very much prejudiced against him because of what I had heard. I lectured for a teachers' institute at New Wilmington, Pennsylvania, when the great preacher was to follow me the next evening. As I was leaving the county superintendent said to me: "When you reach the main line Joseph Cook will get off the train which you are to take. I wish you would speak to him and give him the name of the hotel where I have reserved a room for him." When I reached the junction, and the great savage looking lecturer stepped from the train, I said to myself: ...
— Wit, Humor, Reason, Rhetoric, Prose, Poetry and Story Woven into Eight Popular Lectures • George W. Bain

... of the country changes as we quit the bright valley of the Aveyron, and enter the department of the Cantal at Capdenac, where we join the main line from Clermont-Ferrand to Toulouse. We just touch the department of the Lot at Figeac, a quaint town, birthplace of the great Orientalist Champollion, then enter the valley of the Cere, and ...
— The Roof of France • Matilda Betham-Edwards

... Pimentel, the train makes lengthier stops. The houses all along are similar, one story wooden buildings, generally whitewashed and roofed with tiles, corrugated zinc or palm thatch. La Gina is the beginning of the branch line which extends through monotonous woodland to San Francisco de Macoris. On the main line, after passing La Gina, there are numerous cacao plantations, and near La Vega the muddy Cotui road emerges from the woods and follows the railroad. About eight miles from La Vega is the station of Las Cabullas, the ...
— Santo Domingo - A Country With A Future • Otto Schoenrich

... on the Upper Isonzo which the Italians had seized by dashing forward across the frontier the very morning that war was declared, but it also stood at the head of a most important strategical valley leading back into the mountains on which the Italian main line lay, and from the town lead several easy roads that follow various routes into the plain beyond. Already the enemy was pressing in force along those roads. The Italians had, indeed, fallen back to reserve positions, but were the enemy to win through—as he did within two days—he ...
— World's War Events, Volume III • Various

... miles' drive to the station of the narrow-gauge branch railway which would convey them to the main line did not seem long. For several planters who resided near her road had laid a dak for her, that is, had arranged relays of ponies at various points of the way to enable the journey to be performed quickly. Noreen's heavy luggage ...
— The Elephant God • Gordon Casserly

... marine barracks was as infamous a transaction as ever occurred among military men. The fire was set as the enemy met our regulars upon the main line; and if anything could have appalled these gallant men it would have been the flames in their rear. We have all, I presume, suffered in the public estimation in consequence of this disgraceful burning. The fact is, however, ...
— The Fight for a Free Sea: A Chronicle of the War of 1812 - The Chronicles of America Series, Volume 17 • Ralph D. Paine

... of the air-conditioner intake of the lower building was a specially constructed suit and several hundred feet of power line which was connected to the main line ...
— The Penal Cluster • Ivar Jorgensen (AKA Randall Garrett)

... are chiefly of two kinds. The first are permanent corps which must be sometimes thrown out in a direction opposite to the main line of operations, and are to remain throughout a campaign. The second are corps temporarily detached for the purpose of assisting in carrying out some ...
— The Art of War • Baron Henri de Jomini

... a branch from the Kantara military railway; which branch, leaving the main line at Rafa, ran to Shellal and Gamli, supplying the right of our line. Arrangements were made for this railhead to be pushed forward as rapidly as possible from Shellal towards Karm (some 7 miles to the east-south-east of Shellal), ...
— With the British Army in The Holy Land • Henry Osmond Lock

... the railway clearing house, which, it is suggested, should cover I do not know how many acres of what is now slumland in Shoreditch. The position is particularly convenient for an underground connection with every main line into London. Upon the underground level of this great building every goods train into London will run. Its trucks and vans will be unloaded, the goods passed into lifts, which will take every parcel, large and small, at once to a huge, ingeniously contrived sorting-floor above. There in a ...
— An Englishman Looks at the World • H. G. Wells

... Katanga, each of which at no great distance off becomes a large river; and two rivers thus formed flow north to Egypt, the other two to Inner Ethiopia; that is, Lufira or Bartle Frere's River, flows into Kamolondo, and that into Webb's Lualaba, the main line of drainage. Another, on the north side of the sources, Sir Paraffin Young's Lualaba, flows through Lake Lincoln, otherwise named Chibungo and Lomame, and that too into Webb's Lualaba. Then Liambai Fountain, Palmerston's, forms ...
— The Last Journals of David Livingstone, in Central Africa, from 1865 to His Death, Volume II (of 2), 1869-1873 • David Livingstone

... excitement, Dennis plunged into the region just before the main line of fire, knowing that there the danger would be greatest. None realized the rapidity of its advance. At the door of a tenement-house he found a pale, thin, half-clad woman tugging at ...
— Barriers Burned Away • E. P. Roe

... under traffic as it came to a trunk line, and my car magnetically lagged, until an opening in the traffic permitted it to swing swiftly into the main line tunnel. At the automatic distance of ten feet it followed a car in which rode a scantily clad girl, her flimsy silks fluttering in the rush of air. I cursed my luck. She would be far more likely to turn around than a man, to see if a man were in the ...
— The Airlords of Han • Philip Francis Nowlan

... that didn't worry me, for I haven't tasted anything but water since I was twenty-five—you had to go all the way to Olympia to get it; and what was worse, all the ore had to go to Olympia, too, on a little no account branch road to be shipped over the main line. Well, as soon as I discovered Bonanza City I said that had to change, and it did change. I guess I did as much to make that town as any man out there, and to-day I own about two thirds of it. I've got a house ...
— Life and Gabriella - The Story of a Woman's Courage • Ellen Glasgow

... wing, fell. The shadows were still dense, and the final phase of the siege, viewed from Prince Heinrich Hill, presented a sight brilliant with many flashes and flaming fireworks, and a sound dominated by the thunder of the batteries. But dawn, as the besiegers began in mass to close in upon the main line of forts Iltis, Moltke, and Bismarck, was breaking. It was decided to storm these positions forthwith, since the German fire, owing to exhaustion of the ammunition, was dying away. Governor Meyer-Waldeck, who had been wounded, realized now that further resistance was futile. Shortly ...
— World's War Events, Vol. I • Various

... highest point of the moor, whence, if it cleared a little, he would be able to see to a vast distance. He was curious, too, to look down into the railway cutting. This was a sort of twig from a branch of the main line, chiefly due to Lord Erymanth, who, after fighting off the railway from all points adjacent to his estate, had found it so inconvenient to be without a station within reasonable distance, that a single line had at last been made from Mycening for the benefit of the places ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... occur in two varieties: the first has been already alluded to; in it the bullet actually cuts an oblique track in the bone; the main line of fracture is often considerably comminuted, usually at the proximal end of the track ...
— Surgical Experiences in South Africa, 1899-1900 • George Henry Makins

... other hand, used by Virgil were so much more on the main line of tendency that he stands among a large number of others, some of whom might have had a high reputation but for his overwhelming superiority. Of the other essays made in this period in bucolic poetry we know too little to speak with any confidence. But both didactic poetry and the little ...
— Latin Literature • J. W. Mackail

... the new Californian and Australian mail line. Should such a line become established and prosper, the Victorians fear that an advantage would be given to Sydney, and that Melbourne, instead of being on the main line of mail communication, as it now is, would be shunted on to a branch. But surely there is room enough for a mail line by both the Atlantic and Pacific routes, without occasion for jealousy either on the ...
— A Boy's Voyage Round the World • The Son of Samuel Smiles

... Francais,' confident that I should not be in danger of exposure by encounter with any one who could speak the Russian language. I threw away the ordinary Scotch cap I had been wearing, and put on the Glengarry. When I arrived at the Maryborough junction, the train on the main line from Cork was late, and I walked up and down on the platform, well knowing that the detectives would scrutinize more closely those who appeared to shrink from observation; therefore, I affected the bearing of a Russian prince as ...
— Bidwell's Travels, from Wall Street to London Prison - Fifteen Years in Solitude • Austin Biron Bidwell

... Division, was ordered at 8.30 A.M. Hill 1070 was carried at 8.45, and during the next hour all the remaining advanced positions fell, and it was even reported that the enemy was here and there evacuating portions of his main line. There was now another interval for bombardment, whilst the gunners were wire-cutting for the attack on the main positions. During this period of waiting, which was longer than had been expected, our infantry suffered ...
— The Fife and Forfar Yeomanry - and 14th (F. & F. Yeo.) Battn. R.H. 1914-1919 • D. D. Ogilvie

... Within an hour he discovered that Rookie McTabb had not been to Le Pas for nearly two years. No one had seen him with a child. That same night a construction train was leaving for Etomami, down on the main line, and Billy lost no time in making up his mind what he would do. He would go to Montreal. If little Isobel was not there she was still somewhere in the wilderness with McTabb. Then he would return, and he would find her if ...
— Isobel • James Oliver Curwood

... a thousand acres of cut-over land two hours south of Buffalo in Cattaraugus County. At the same time it purchased one hundred and thirteen acres lying along the main line of the New York Central Railroad at Chittenango in Madison County. This past spring nut trees were ordered from nurseries in Pennsylvania and planted in the heavy soils on the Chittenango Forest Station and also on the State Forest Experiment Station at Syracuse. At the Salamanca station young ...
— Northern Nut Growers Association Report of the Proceedings at the Sixth Annual Meeting. Rochester, New York, September 1 and 2, 1915 • Various

... opposed it with all their efforts at every step. They also, by a manoeuvre which their position of power over the Oswestry Company and their railway experience enabled them to carry out, succeeded in separating the Shrewsbury from the main line, and causing it to drift into the hands of the North Western. They, on the day of, or immediately before the Wharncliffe meeting of the Oswestry Company, got their friends to pay into the bankers in respect of their shares, and give ...
— The Story of the Cambrian - A Biography of a Railway • C. P. Gasquoine

... the forenoon of June 18, he himself attacked the British forces at Waterloo. The French got possession of La Haye Sainte, a farmhouse in front of Wellington's center, the scene of a bloody contest; but all their charges on Wellington's main line were met and repelled by the immovable squares of the British infantry. In the afternoon Napoleon's right began to be assailed by the Prussians; and finding, at seven o'clock, that they were coming in great force, he ordered a charge ...
— Outline of Universal History • George Park Fisher

... The district is very highly cultivated and thickly populated. There are several indigo factories, and mills for pressing and cleaning cotton, but the former have greatly suffered by the decline in indigo of recent years. The main line of the East Indian railway and the Oudh and Rohilkhand railway cross the district. The chief ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Part 3 - "Brescia" to "Bulgaria" • Various

... enemy. On the 6th of November, reported General Pershing, "a division of the first corps reached a point on the Meuse opposite Sedan, twenty-five miles from our line of departure. The strategical goal which was our highest hope was gained. We had cut the enemy's main line of communications and nothing but a surrender or an armistice could save his army from complete disaster." Five days later the end came. On the morning of November 11, the order to cease firing went into effect. The German army was in rapid retreat and demoralization ...
— History of the United States • Charles A. Beard and Mary R. Beard

... day a despatch came from Frederic Cullen telling his father he would join us at Lamy on No. 8 that evening. I at once ordered 97 and 218 coupled to the connecting train, and in an hour we were back on the main line. While waiting for the overland to arrive, Mr. Cullen asked me to do something which, as it later proved to have considerable bearing on the events of that night, is worth mentioning, trivial as it seems. When I had first joined the party, I had given orders for 97 to be kicked in ...
— Master Tales of Mystery, Volume 3 • Collected and Arranged by Francis J. Reynolds

... Tokugawa are the representatives of the main line of the shogun; the Marquises Tokugawa, representatives of the Sanke, and the ...
— A History of the Japanese People - From the Earliest Times to the End of the Meiji Era • Frank Brinkley and Dairoku Kikuchi

... the 7th Allenby had pushed ten miles along the coast beyond Gaza. The advance was now rapid in this direction. On the 9th we occupied Ascalon; on the 14th the Turks were driven from the junction where the branch line to Jerusalem joins the main line running down the coastal plain, and the Holy City was cut off from rail-communication with the Turkish base; and on the 16th Jaffa was captured. Allenby then swung round towards the east to threaten Jerusalem from the north, while his right ...
— A Short History of the Great War • A.F. Pollard

... said he, "and so hungry that I ate what they call marble cake for supper, and a great many other things out of little side dishes, and nearly died of indigestion afterward. Then I took a train up to the main line. An express came along. 'Why not go West?' I asked myself, and I jumped aboard. It was another whim—you know I am subject to them. When I got to Victoria I wired for money and sailed to Japan; and then I went on to India and through the Suez, taking things ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... of Mr. Carter, the owner of the plantation on which the battle was fought. The reserve line was posted behind the fence at the other end of the garden, close to the Carter residence, where the ground was a little higher, and sixty-five yards in rear of the main line. This reserve line, with the fence for a basis, had constructed a rude barricade as a protection against bullets which might come over the front line. When Opdycke's demi-brigade, charging on the west side of the pike, came to this barricade, it halted there, probably mistaking it for ...
— The Battle of Franklin, Tennessee • John K. Shellenberger

... not least, for this was our first permanent mission station in South India. Work was indeed begun at Vizagapatam in 1836, but in 1837 it was moved to Madras, and in 1840 to Nellore, Madras being reopened in 1878. Nellore is one hundred and seven miles north of Madras, on the main line of railway, and sixteen miles from the seacoast. In the Nellore field we have six churches, and a total of nine hundred and twenty-six members. It is our Baptist schools that most attract our attention. The Coles-Ackerman ...
— A Tour of the Missions - Observations and Conclusions • Augustus Hopkins Strong

... poetical sentiment than Tennyson, and less intellectual vigor and abundance than Browning; yet because I have, perhaps, more of a fusion of the two than either of them, and have more regularly applied that fusion to the main line of modern development, I am likely enough to have my turn, as they have had theirs." If the main movement had been such as he thought of it, or if it had been of importance in the long run, there might be a sounder basis for this hope than ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol. 2 • Charles Dudley Warner

... grass like hungry, red tongues. One of these Beatrice watched curiously. It crept slyly into an unburned hollow, and the wind, veering suddenly, pushed it out of sight from the fighters and sent it racing merrily to the south. The main line of fire beat doggedly up against the wind that a minute before had been friendly, and fought bravely two foes instead of one. It dodged, ducked, and leaped high, and the men ...
— Her Prairie Knight • B.M. Sinclair, AKA B. M. Bower

... that town and a cruel massacre. Certainly there was something which baffled all imaginable precautions and all medical science, in the suddenness [112] with which the disease broke out simultaneously, here and there, among both soldiers and citizens, even in places far remote from the main line of its march in the rear of the victorious army. It seemed to have invaded the whole empire, and some have even thought that, in a mitigated form, it permanently remained there. In Rome itself many thousands perished; and old authorities tell of farmsteads, ...
— Marius the Epicurean, Volume One • Walter Horatio Pater

... imagine, a castle, but merely a huge, overgrown two-storied chalet, surrounded by a number of smaller wooden dwelling-houses for the use of the imperial suite. Formerly, it required a drive of at least three hours from the station on the main line in order to reach the jagdschloss. But since the accession of the emperor he has caused a private railroad to be constructed from the trunk line to a small station within a few hundred yards ...
— The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) • Mme. La Marquise de Fontenoy

... and is actually in daily use throughout England in the railway vocabulary—I mean the verb "to shunt." Nothing is more common than to see announced, that at a certain station the parliamentary "shunts" to let the Express pass; or to hear the order—"shunt that truck," push it aside, off the main line. In the curious ballad put forth in 1550, called "John Nobody" (Strype's Life of Cranmer, App. p. 138.), in derision of the Reformed church, the writer describes how, hearing the sound of a "synagogue," namely, a congregation of the new faith, ...
— Notes and Queries, Number 72, March 15, 1851 • Various

... into small railway waggons or tubs to be removed. This is done mostly by boys, but in the larger mines by ponies of the Shetland and other small breeds. The tubs are taken to a part of the mine where, if one may so speak, the main line is reached, and then formed into trains, and taken to the shaft by means of an endless rope worked by an engine in the pit. In accomplishing all this work, great care has to be taken that the current of air is not changed ...
— Lectures on Popular and Scientific Subjects • John Sutherland Sinclair, Earl of Caithness

... restrained joy and delight in itself, but without vanity; and it is pure. There is nothing certainly supersensual in that fair, round head, any more than in the long, agile limbs; but also no impediment, natural or acquired. To have achieved just that, was the Greek's truest claim for furtherance in the main line of human development. He had been faithful, we cannot help saying, as we pass from that youthful company, in what comparatively is perhaps little—in the culture, the administration, of the visible world; and he merited, so we might go on to say—he ...
— Greek Studies: A Series of Essays • Walter Horatio Pater

... was found impossible for the main line of the railway to touch our town, we determined, rather than allow all our exertions to be wasted, to construct a branch line on our own account. I had the honour to be elected chairman of the board of directors of this undertaking. No directors ...
— Three Dramas - The Editor—The Bankrupt—The King • Bjornstjerne M. Bjornson

... ask what you said to her?" said Mrs. Hilbrough, characteristically refusing to be shunted from the main line of her purpose. ...
— The Faith Doctor - A Story of New York • Edward Eggleston

... twenty-five miles from those little rock tanks at Cabeza Prieta. Deep drillin' may get water—I hope so. But that will take time and money. There'll have to be a seventy-five-mile spur of railroad built, anyway, leaving the main line somewhere about Mohawk: we'd just as well count on hauling water from the Gila the first year. Them tanks will about run a ten-man gang a month after each rain, countin' in the team ...
— Copper Streak Trail • Eugene Manlove Rhodes

... now halted on the edge of the river, while two men swam across with one end of the long rope. Upon gaining the opposite bank, I observed that a second rope was made fast to the middle of the main line; thus upon our side we held the ends of two ropes, while on the opposite side they had only one; accordingly, the point of junction of the two ropes in the centre formed an acute angle. The object of this was soon practically explained. Two ...
— Library Of The World's Best Literature, Ancient And Modern, Vol 3 • Various

... rest at Bruay, the Battalion left for a training camp where for over a month the Battalion, in conjunction with the remainder of the 2nd Division, trained on ground marked out showing the different communication and main line trenches then held by the Huns and which were to be our objectives. This is made possible by the accurate photography from ...
— Over the top with the 25th - Chronicle of events at Vimy Ridge and Courcellette • R. Lewis

... will reason as if the slight variation were a toothing stone set up by the organism and reserved for a later construction. This hypothesis, so little conformable to the Darwinian principle, is difficult enough to avoid even in the case of an organ which has been developed along one single main line of evolution, e.g. the vertebrate eye. But it is absolutely forced upon us when we observe the likeness of structure of the vertebrate eye and that of the molluscs. How could the same small variations, incalculable in number, have ever occurred in the same order on two independent ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... been long completed and formed theoretically as well as practically the content of the Jew's life and thought. Sura in Babylonia, where Saadia was the head of the academy, was the chief centre of Jewish learning, and Saadia was the heir in the main line of Jewish development as it passed through the hands of lawgiver and prophet, scribe and Pharisee, Tanna and Amora, Saburai and Gaon. As the head of the Sura academy he was the intellectual representative of the Jewry and ...
— A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy • Isaac Husik

... Ferrara I was chosen to go to Arquata Scrivia, a little town on the main line north of Genoa. This had been selected as the Base for the British Forces in Italy, and I was to get in touch with the Ordnance people there, to give them a list of our really urgent requirements and try to hasten their delivery, so as to get us back into action as soon ...
— With British Guns in Italy - A Tribute to Italian Achievement • Hugh Dalton

... operator of the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation noticed that the Hiroshima station had gone off the air. He tried to use another telephone line to reestablish his program, but it too had failed. About twenty minutes later the Tokyo railroad telegraph center realized that the main line telegraph had stopped working just north of Hiroshima. From some small railway stops within ten miles of the city there came unofficial and confused reports of a terrible explosion in Hiroshima. All these reports were transmitted to the Headquarters ...
— The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki • United States

... the course which the marauders had as yet taken in their flight was a zigzag one, running eccentrically at all sorts of angles in all sorts of directions. But our leader had marked out a course where we might intercept our foes across the main line of their flight; and till we had reached that region we paused not a second, but went as fast as we could all night long. Indeed, it was amongst us a race as was the Olympic race of old Greece, each ...
— The Lady of the Shroud • Bram Stoker

... With regard to the main line in the Free State I must remark here that things there were in a different condition from what they were on the Krugersdorp line, which we had crossed. The Free State railway was Lord Roberts' principal line of communication, and he had provided ...
— Three Years' War • Christiaan Rudolf de Wet

... quick sensitiveness as to close unity and slight diversity, as to what is principal and what is subordinate, as to what is in the direct, main line of thought, and what is by the way, casual, or merely a connecting link. This sense of proportion, of close or remote relation, of directness and indirectness, the feeling for perspective, so-called, can be acquired ...
— Public Speaking • Irvah Lester Winter

... giving in, and he had spent money enough at Queen's Hall—and he walked over Westminster Bridge, in front of St. Thomas's Hospital, and through the immense tunnel that passes under the South-Western main line at Vauxhall. In the tunnel he paused and listened to the roar of the trains. A sharp pain darted through his head, and he was conscious of the exact form of his eye sockets. He pushed on for another mile, and did ...
— Howards End • E. M. Forster

... got on the main line again and pursued our way farther north, it was through even stouter snow shelters and through many tunnels. Not a few miserable dwellings were to be seen as we passed into Akita prefecture. We broke ...
— The Foundations of Japan • J.W. Robertson Scott

... invader the vast network of Belgian railways RRR crammed with rolling stock, and provided such opportunities for rapid advance as no other district in Europe could show. But all this system converged upon the main line which ran through the ring of forts round Liege, L, and so passed through Aix-la-Chapelle, A, ...
— A General Sketch of the European War - The First Phase • Hilaire Belloc

... about two miles further on crossed this latter range, and we found ourselves in a grassy valley, about four miles wide, bounded seawards by sandy downs. Along its centre lay a chain of reedy freshwater swamps, and native paths ran in from all quarters to one main line of ...
— Journals Of Two Expeditions Of Discovery In North-West And Western Australia, Vol. 2 (of 2) • George Grey

... almost finished. The main line of communication between Europe and Asia will pass through Smyrna, Aleppo, Bagdad, and Bassora on the Persian Gulf. A road will also run from Jaffa through Jerusalem, and will connect with Damascus. Parlor, sleeping, and hotel cars will be placed on all these ...
— 1931: A Glance at the Twentieth Century • Henry Hartshorne

... mid-afternoon, one or the other of the two friends was ever at his side, ready to urge more of the acid fruit upon him and continually seeking to divert and entertain him by cheerful talk. Until after the noon hour they were on the main line and had the benefit of the dining-car. Griffith ordered a hearty meal, more dinner than luncheon, and Blake was able to eat the greater ...
— Out of the Primitive • Robert Ames Bennet

... Delane found the main line from Millsborough to Ipscombe dotted at intervals with groups of persons returning from the harvest festival—elderly women with children, a few old labourers, a few soldiers on leave, with a lively ...
— Harvest • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... more than a million of pounds, was dumped down at this small railway junction, so that the position could not be evacuated without a crippling loss. The place was the point of bifurcation of the main line, which divides at this little town into one branch running to Harrismith in the Orange Free State, and the other leading through the Dundee coal fields and Newcastle to the Laing's Nek tunnel and the Transvaal. An importance, which appears ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... talk about it, anyway, and perhaps a little sympathy. When Mary had the buggy she wouldn't be tied down so much to that wretched hole in the Bush; and the Sydney trips needn't be off either. I could drive down to Wallerawang on the main line, where Mary had some people, and leave the buggy and horses there, and take the train to Sydney; or go right on, by the old coach-road, over the Blue Mountains: it would be a grand drive. I thought best to tell Mary's sister at Gulgong about the buggy; I told her I'd keep it dark from Mary ...
— Joe Wilson and His Mates • Henry Lawson

... similar blow, less final in its character, was dealt by Colonel Crabbe to the commando of Van der Merve, which was an offshoot of that of Scheepers. The action was fought near Laingsburg, which is on the main line, just north of Matjesfontein, and it ended in the scattering of the Boer band, the death of their boy leader (he was only eighteen years of age), and the capture of thirty-seven prisoners. Seventy of the Beers escaped by a hidden road. To Colonials ...
— The Great Boer War • Arthur Conan Doyle

... taken them through the Lakes, and had then seen them off for the south. He himself was on his way to Scotland to fish. He had sent his luggage to Pengarth by rail, and chose to bicycle, himself, through the Vale of St. John, because the weather was so fine. He intended to catch a night train on the main line." ...
— The Mating of Lydia • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... touch and a lucidity of reasoning at once charming and full of edification: but, lo! a pun trails accidentally off the journalist's pen, or an odd collocation of ideas jostle each other in his brain: the writer at once stops his instructive reasoning; he goes off the main line and careers bounding down some devious side-path of entertaining nonsense. Our home papers are almost uniformly staid; they are written conscientiously, laboriously, commendably. But, after all, the French are right in trying ...
— Literary Tours in The Highlands and Islands of Scotland • Daniel Turner Holmes

... already been made to the bastion-work known as Fort Sanders. A more particular description is now needed. The main line, held by our troops, made almost a right angle at the fort, the northwest bastion being the salient of the angle. The ground in front of the fort, from which the wood had been cleared, sloped gradually for a distance of eighty ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 105, July 1866 • Various

... attentively, wondered whether he might, in some remarkable manner, have become acquainted with the particulars of her own case. Truth, he contended, was indispensable to the wise and comfortable conduct of life. Truth could only run on the main line; any deviation led to serious disaster. Truth might, at times, hurt others at the moment, but, in the end, it did nothing but good. Gertie felt impressed, and the effect of the address upon her was not decreased when, ...
— Love at Paddington • W. Pett Ridge

... Furthermore, I was disgusted. The distance between Montreal and Ottawa is one hundred and twenty miles. I ought to know, for I had just come over it and it had taken me six days. By mistake I had missed the main line and come over a small "jerk" with only two locals a day on it. And during these six days I had lived on dry crusts, and not enough of them, begged from the ...
— The Road • Jack London

... the Great Northern main line somewhere," answered the driver. "This lady wants to catch a Scotch express. ...
— The Rayner-Slade Amalgamation • J. S. Fletcher

... smoothly at first. The homes of their fathers were void; new dunghills, comparatively flavourless, had to be made, the old accretions, endeared by ancestral associations, had to be abandoned, and the old effluvium weakened by distance was all that was left to them. The new town was off the main line of trade and traffic, but it was thought that these, with the old Tipperary odour, would come in time. Streets and marts were built by the Land League at a cost of L20,000 or more. The people moved away, but they soon moved back again. The shopkeepers could do no business, ...
— Ireland as It Is - And as It Would be Under Home Rule • Robert John Buckley (AKA R.J.B.)

... the special coaches was barely moving on its jiggly way to the main line, carrying the tag end of the revellers, when he set forth in his car for a mid-day visit to Red Roof. Already the huge camp of Slavs and Italians was beginning to jerk up the borrowed rails and ties; the work trains were rumbling and snorting in the meadows above Blitherwood, tottering about on the ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... digested and nearly forgotten their newspaper, while he is waiting in a fever of expectation to know whether rums is much riz or sugars is greatly fell. He calls for a branch railway to put him on equal terms; but a vast hill, perhaps, rises between him and the main line—it would cost forty thousands pounds a mile—he must bore an enormous tunnel, and fill up a prodigious valley, and the united wealth of all the shopkeepers in the town would fall far short of the required half million. He sinks down ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine — Volume 54, No. 335, September 1843 • Various

... from the west, by automobile from east and west both. From whatever direction, the Valley is the first objective, for the hotels are there. It is the Valley, then, which we must see first. Nature's artistic contrivance is apparent even in the entrance. The train-ride from the main line at Merced is a constant up-valley progress, from a hot, treeless plain to the heart of the great, cool forest. Expectation keeps pace. Changing to automobile at El Portal, one quickly enters the park. A few miles of forest and behold—the Gates of the Valley. ...
— The Book of the National Parks • Robert Sterling Yard

... valley, when on time, leaves Sicamous, on the main line of the C.P.R., at about ten, good morning, but sometimes she waits for the delayed eastern train. This happens very frequently on Sundays—for who or what was ever on time on a Sunday? Sunday is the lazy man's day—the lazy day of the world—the day on ...
— Skookum Chuck Fables - Bits of History, Through the Microscope • Skookum Chuck (pseud for R.D. Cumming)

... railway system. It has a telephone system, is lighted by electricity, and possesses a flourishing university with thirty professors and 300 students. Tomsk, Tobolsk, and Yeniseisk would be difficult to reach by the main line as they are surrounded by vast swamps, and therefore the line is thus laid considerably south of these great towns. They are accessible with ease by side lines ...
— Russia - As Seen and Described by Famous Writers • Various

... map heretofore mentioned, I concluded that the most effective plan would be to pass a small column around the enemy's left, by way of this road, and strike his rear by a mounted charge simultaneously with an advance of our main line on his front. I knew that the attack in rear would be a most hazardous undertaking, but in the face of such odds as the enemy had the condition of affairs was most critical, and could be relieved, only by a bold and radical change in our tactics; so I at once selected ...
— The Memoirs of General Philip H. Sheridan, Vol. I., Part 2 • P. H. Sheridan

... point of holloaing "Stop thief!" It was exactly five o'clock, and he was not more than a quarter of a mile or so from Waterloo Station. A hansom was sauntering along in front of him, he sprang into it. "Waterloo, main line," he shouted, "as hard as you can go," and in another moment he was rolling across the bridge. Five or six minutes' drive brought him to the station, to which an enormous number of people were hurrying, collected together partly by a rumour of what was going on, ...
— Mr. Meeson's Will • H. Rider Haggard

... car has no business inside the fence; this is the old ice-house freight siding. They should have left you standing out near the main line." ...
— Roy Blakeley's Camp on Wheels • Percy Keese Fitzhugh

... I settled down at my headquarters, the house of my brother James in Glasgow; and thence began to open up the main line of my operations, as the Lord day by day guided me. Having the aid of no Committee, I cast myself on Minister after Minister and Church after Church, calling here, writing there, and arranging for three meetings every Sabbath, and one, if possible, ...
— The Story of John G. Paton - Or Thirty Years Among South Sea Cannibals • James Paton

... certain lower centers to their proper peripheral stimuli, while inhibiting the response of other lower centers to their appropriate stimuli. This is the same sort of thing that we observe in all control exerted by a higher center over a lower. It means that the higher center, besides its main line of connection with the lower center that will give the end-reaction, has minor lines of connection with certain other lower centers; some of these centers it facilitates and others it inhibits. These connections between the main and the subordinate centers may have been established by inborn nature, ...
— Psychology - A Study Of Mental Life • Robert S. Woodworth

... purpose. Christianity could not be made its sole terminus. It reminds one of the story of the brakeman who was persuaded to go to church. When he came out his friend asked him how he liked the preacher. He said, "Very well, on the main line. He had good wheels, his track was straight and level, and he carried a good head of steam, but he seemed to ...
— Men, Women, and Gods - And Other Lectures • Helen H. Gardener

... which it was necessary for the Spaniards to cross in their renewed invasion of Veragua. On the northern banks of this stream Uracca stationed his troops, selecting this spot with much skill as his main line of defence. He however posted an advanced guard some miles south of the stream in ground broken by hills, rocks and ravines, through which the Spaniards would be compelled to pass, and where their cavalry could be of very ...
— Ferdinand De Soto, The Discoverer of the Mississippi - American Pioneers and Patriots • John S. C. Abbott

... went by boat to Annapolis. The same course was taken by a regiment of Massachusetts mechanics, the Eighth. Landing at Annapolis, the two regiments, dandies and laborers, fraternized at once in the common bond of loyalty to the Union. A branch railway led from Annapolis to the main line between Washington and Baltimore. The rails had been torn up. The Massachusetts mechanics set to work to relay them. The Governor of Maryland protested. He was disregarded. The two regiments toiled together a long ...
— Abraham Lincoln and the Union - A Chronicle of the Embattled North, Volume 29 In The - Chronicles Of America Series • Nathaniel W. Stephenson

... strong in itself, with a perfect glacis and field of fire. Every invention of modern defensive war helped to make it stronger. In front of it was the usual system of barbed wire, stretched on iron supports, over a width of fifty yards. Behind the wire was the system of the First Enemy Main Line, from which many communication-trenches ran to the central fortress of the salient, known as the Kern Redoubt, and to the Support or Guard Line. This First Main Line, even now, after countless bombardments and nine ...
— Attack - An Infantry Subaltern's Impression of July 1st, 1916 • Edward G. D. Liveing

... into the sea. At night the lighthouses of Cannes and Antibes flashed alternately red and green, and between them Cannes sparkled. Inland to the left of Cannes were Mougins on a hill and Grasse above on the mountain side. Occasional trails of smoke marked the main line of the railway along the coast and the branch line from Cannes to Grasse. In the sea lay the Iles de Lerins, Sainte-Marguerite almost touching the point ...
— Riviera Towns • Herbert Adams Gibbons

... and metropolis, is located in the center of the county, 120 miles east of Portland. It is the terminus of the Goldendale branch of the Spokane, Portland & Seattle railway, making connection with the main line at Lyle. It is located in the heart of a splendid agricultural section and at the edge of ...
— A Review of the Resources and Industries of the State of Washington, 1909 • Ithamar Howell

... On the contrary, it is the great name in our family, especially in the main line. I would have been given that name if the governor had not been looking out for Hugh Mainwaring's money. There was a direct line of Harolds down to my great-grandfather. He gave the name to his eldest son, but he died, ...
— That Mainwaring Affair • Maynard Barbour

... twenty-five columns were then sweeping the southern districts of the Orange Free State. Now if the river was in flood these columns could press us against it, and we would then be in an awful predicament. So I resolved to cut the wire of the main line near Springfontein Junction, and from there march in the direction ...
— In the Shadow of Death • P. H. Kritzinger and R. D. McDonald

... been ordered forward than the enemy's line of battle, upon which they had come, poured a galling fire into them, the bullets whistling over our heads causing a momentary panic among the skirmishers, a part retreating to the main line. A battery of six guns stationed in a fort in our front, opened upon us with shell and grape. Being in the valley, between the two hills, the bullets rattled over our heads doing no damage, but threw us into some excitement. The Third being near the center of the brigade, ...
— History of Kershaw's Brigade • D. Augustus Dickert

... obliged to travel in India by the old cumbrous methods of going on foot or on horseback, in palanquins or unwieldy coaches; now fast steamboats ply on the Indus and the Ganges, and a great railway, with branch lines joining the main line at many points on its route, traverses the peninsula from Bombay to Calcutta in three days. This railway does not run in a direct line across India. The distance between Bombay and Calcutta, as the bird flies, is only from one thousand to eleven hundred miles; ...
— Around the World in 80 Days • Jules Verne

... than last night. I had a long journey and a cold one; but never was sick nor sorry the whole way. It was a long one because when we got to Berwick, we had to go round through the hills by Kelso, as there was a block on the main line. I knew nothing of this, and you may imagine my bewilderment when I came to myself, the train standing and whistling dismally in the black morning, before a little vacant half-lit station, with a name up that ...
— The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson - Swanston Edition Vol. 23 (of 25) • Robert Louis Stevenson

... think much of him between ourselves," said the conductor. "What do you think he has done to-night? He's put a new man on Eighty-six. A man from one of the branch lines who doesn't know the road. I doubt if he's ever been over the main line before. Now, it's an anxious enough time for me anyhow with a heavy train to take through, with the thermometer at zero, and the rails like glass, and I like to have a man in front ...
— The Face And The Mask • Robert Barr

... acceptance of his times[377] Sir Philip Sidney wrote his Apologie for Poetrie. In this dignified and vigorous pamphlet, written about 1583, and published in 1595, Sidney presents the best and most consistent argument for the moral purpose of poetry that appeared in England. That the main line of his argument and his best material is drawn from Minturno and Scaliger, as Spingarn has demonstrated,[378] in no way invalidates his claim to distinction. The purpose of poetry is to Sidney, in the first place, ...
— Rhetoric and Poetry in the Renaissance - A Study of Rhetorical Terms in English Renaissance Literary Criticism • Donald Lemen Clark

... generally insured to a region a peaceful history; natural wealth has always brought the conqueror. In ancient Greece the fruitful plains of Thessaly, Boeotia, Elis and Laconia had a fatal attraction for every migrating horde; Attica's rugged surface, poor soil, and side-tracked location off the main line of travel between Hellas and the Peloponnesus saved it from many a rough visitant,[210] and hence left the Athenians, according to Thucydides, an indigenous race. The fertility of the Rhine Valley has always attracted invasion, the barren ...
— Influences of Geographic Environment - On the Basis of Ratzel's System of Anthropo-Geography • Ellen Churchill Semple

... supplies. He was neither wealthy nor at all poor. Every summer, despite Claire's delicate hints, they took the same cottage on the Jersey Coast, and Mr. Boltwood came down for Sunday. Claire had gone to a good school out of Philadelphia, on the Main Line. She was used to gracious leisure, attractive uselessness, nut-center chocolates, and a certain wonder as to ...
— Free Air • Sinclair Lewis

... German hammer blows were intended to drive a wedge between the British and French Armies, to roll up the British flank northwards to the sea-coast and the French flank southwards to Paris, and to capture the main line of communication between these Northern and Southern Armies. By skilful reinforcement of threatened points, Marshal Haig frustrated the primary object of the attack, and by the aid of the French Armies the whole line fell back, ...
— Lectures on Land Warfare; A tactical Manual for the Use of Infantry Officers • Anonymous

... Salamanca; and that reports were current in the French camp that a very large force had crossed the frontier, at the northeastern corner of Portugal, with the evident design of recovering the north of Leon, and of cutting the main line of communication ...
— Under Wellington's Command - A Tale of the Peninsular War • G. A. Henty

... lines; steady improvement is taking place with the recent admission of private and private-public investors, but, with telephone density at about two for each 100 persons and a waiting list of over 2 million, demand for main line telephone service will not be satisfied for a very long time domestic: local service is provided by microwave radio relay and coaxial cable, with open wire and obsolete electromechanical and manual switchboard systems still in use in rural areas; starting in the 1980s, ...
— The 2002 CIA World Factbook • US Government

... with fury, and the men fell fast, yet they closed up at the word of command with the most perfect coolness. The French skirmishers, too, running forward with great speed and daring, drove in the British skirmishers, who came running back to the main line smoke-begrimed ...
— Deeds that Won the Empire - Historic Battle Scenes • W. H. Fitchett

... is the seed of the old tree. Cherish it, lest a grafted tree flourish in thy house.'" . . . . His words rose triumphantly. "Yes, yes, I heard it with my own ears, the Voice. The crabbed tree, that is the main line, dying in me; the grafted tree is the Vaufontaine, the interloper and the mongrel; and the sapling from the same seed as the crabbed old tree"—he reached out as though to clutch Philip's arm, but drew back, sat erect in his ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... the boys were on the platform of the little village station, watching some trucks being shunted from the main line on to a siding. Suddenly there was a loud cry from one of the men engaged in the work as a heavy truck got off the rails, turned over, and dragged another with it. No one was seriously hurt, but the station-master, who was soon on the scene of the accident, turned pale as he saw the obstruction ...
— Chatterbox, 1905. • Various

... Creek Bridge was hardly off the minds of the mountain men when a disaster of a different sort befell the division. In the Rat Valley east of Sleepy Cat the main line springs between two ranges of hills with a dip and a long supported grade in each direction. At the point of the dip there is a switch from which a spur runs to a granite quarry. The track for two ...
— Whispering Smith • Frank H. Spearman

... almost wonder whether the train will be able to keep its right road? There seems to be great confusion; yet we know this is not so. We know those many lines are mathematically correct. If you want to keep your eye on the main line, you mustn't be misled by the lines which touch and cross it, which seem to belong to it, until they suddenly sweep off in another direction. In this Bridwell affair we have to be careful not to be misled by cross lines, ...
— The Master Detective - Being Some Further Investigations of Christopher Quarles • Percy James Brebner

... may have believed that Jackson was retreating, he was bound to guard against the possibility of an attack, knowing as he did Jackson's whereabouts and habit of rapid mystery. Had he thrown the entire Eleventh Corps en potence to his main line, as above indicated, to arrest or retard an attack if made; had he drawn troops from Meade on the extreme left, where half an hour's reconnoitring would have shown that nothing was in his front, and from Couch's reserves in the centre; had he thrown heavy columns ...
— The Campaign of Chancellorsville • Theodore A. Dodge

... the railroad to Grenoble branches off at right angles to the main line, it was then only complete as far as Rives, now it is continued the whole way to Grenoble; by which the reader will save some two or three hours, but miss a beautiful ride from Rives to Grenoble by the road. The valley bears the name of Gresivaudan. It is very rich ...
— Samuel Butler's Cambridge Pieces • Samuel Butler

... first met him under the following circumstances. I think it was in the year 1874 along in the fall, I had been up the trail with some cattle and was returning through Wyoming en route to Arizona. I had been riding hard all day and as it began to get dark I sighted a small station on the main line of the Union Pacific, and I concluded to give it a passing call out of curiosity. As I drew near I noticed several rough-looking customers hanging around in a suspicious manner, and I at once concluded that they were ...
— The Life and Adventures of Nat Love - Better Known in the Cattle Country as "Deadwood Dick" • Nat Love

... of the 2d of May, General Lee was early in the saddle, and rode to the front, where he remained in personal command of the force facing the enemy's main line of battle ...
— A Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee • John Esten Cooke

... to be a bit soulless. The Manila Railway Company is extending its line to Baguio by means of a branch leaving the main line at Aringay. The building of this extension is now [514] fifty-five per cent completed, and the company is bound under the terms of its agreement to finish the road by August, 1914. In the event of its failure to do so, it must pay a monthly ...
— The Philippines: Past and Present (vol. 1 of 2) • Dean C. Worcester

... having overtaken another, from the failure of a tube in the first engine, or from some other slight disarrangement; and collision has also taken place from the switches having been accidentally so left as to direct the train into a siding, instead of continuing it on the main line. Every train now carries fog signals, which are detonating packets, which are fixed upon the rails in advance or in the rear of a train which, whether from getting off the rails or otherwise, is stopped upon the ...
— A Catechism of the Steam Engine • John Bourne

... headquarters. From here one had a view—a fair view and, roughly, a fan-shaped view—of certain highly important artillery operations. Likewise, the eminence, gentle and gradual as it was, commanded a mile-long stretch of the road, which formed the main line of communication between the front and the base; and these two facts in part explained why the general had made this his abiding place. Even my layman's mind could sense the reasons for establishing ...
— Paths of Glory - Impressions of War Written At and Near the Front • Irvin S. Cobb

... confronted the pickets of McCall's division at Mechanicsville before daylight on the morning of the 26th. Jackson, delayed by our skirmishers, was still behind. Without waiting for Jackson, Hill ordered an attack by daylight. Our pickets were forced back upon the main line, and the battle of Mechanicsville commenced. McCall's division, consisting of Reynolds', Meade's and Seymour's brigades, was strongly posted behind Beaver Dam creek; a stream about twelve feet wide, wooded on either side, with water ...
— Three Years in the Sixth Corps • George T. Stevens

... Louis XIII. and Louis XIV. married Austrian princesses of the Spanish branch; and the marriage of Louis XIV. and Maria Theresa led to the founding of that Bourbon line which reigns over Spain, though the main line has ceased to reign in France. The greatness of the house of Austria in the seventeenth century is visible only in Germany, after the death of Philip IV. of Spain. The German Hapsburgs had a powerful influence in the seventeenth century, playing then great parts, but often finding themselves ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 110, December, 1866 - A Magazine of Literature, Science, Art, and Politics • Various

... and across the river bottom alongside the pier sites. The portion of the track in the river bottom was supported on bents of spliced ties, jetted to the rock, and wired to the cofferdam to avoid the danger of loss in case of high water. The sand and crushed rock were delivered by cars from the main line track, immediately above the mixer, and the cement was stored in a shanty at one side of the mixer. The concrete materials and machinery were, in this manner, very conveniently located for rapid work and well above the high water line. The concrete was transported ...
— Concrete Construction - Methods and Costs • Halbert P. Gillette

... seek Mr Turnbull's cottage, recover my garments, and especially Scudder's note-book, and then make for the main line and get back to the south. It seemed to me that the sooner I got in touch with the Foreign Office man, Sir Walter Bullivant, the better. I didn't see how I could get more proof than I had got already. He must just take or leave my story, and anyway, with him I would be in better hands than those ...
— The Thirty-nine Steps • John Buchan

... at the gate when they drove up, and all three entered the stage and went to Athens. At Athens they stopped a short time at the Lanier House; sent their baggage down to the depot, and took the train on the Washington Branch Railroad, which connects with the main line at Union Point. Mr. Maroney bid them good-bye, and returned to the Lanier House. The train consisted of only one car, and Roch had to take a seat in the same car with Mrs. Maroney, but he went in behind her, and took a seat in the rear ...
— The Expressman and the Detective • Allan Pinkerton

... River on the east, 148th Street on the south, and 149th Street on the north. The electric subway trains will enter the shops and car yard by means of the Lenox Avenue extension, which runs directly north from the junction at 142d Street and Lenox Avenue of the East Side main line. The branch leaves the main line at 142d Street, gradually approaches the surface, and ...
— The New York Subway - Its Construction and Equipment • Anonymous

... guard. "They're always late." Then he went to sleep again, and was aroused in a few minutes by some one entering the carriage in a great hurry. The branch train had come in, just as the guardians of the line then present had made up their minds that the passengers on the main line should not be kept waiting any longer. The transfer of men, women, and luggage was therefore made in great haste, and they who were now taking their new seats had hardly time to look about them. An old gentleman, very red ...
— The Small House at Allington • Anthony Trollope

... had supper in the diner, while the long train, now out upon the main line, settled itself to its pace, the prolonged, even gallop that it would hold for the better part of the week, spinning out the miles as a cotton spinner ...
— The Octopus • Frank Norris

... train, which runs from Bristol to London in exactly two hours, via Badminton, is matched by a down train in the same time by the easier but slightly longer main line (via Bath), giving a start-to-stop speed of 59-1/8 miles an hour, with a dead slow through Bath Station. But to Bath, where a coach is slipped, the inclusive speed is 60 miles an hour, as the distance is 107 miles (all but 10 chains), and the time from Paddington, 1 hr. 47 min. ...
— The King's Post • R. C. Tombs

... answered her friend, burying her small nose in her muff for a moment, as she faced the cutting wind. "He's only going down to Pocatello to-night, and out on the main line a little ways, to meet Charlie MacGregor, our ...
— In Blue Creek Canon • Anna Chapin Ray

... found themselves travelling back along the main line. A run of twenty minutes brought them to the junction, where, at an adjacent siding they found a sort of train in miniature which ran over a narrow-gauge railway towards the sea. Its course lay through a romantic valley hidden between high heather-clad ...
— Scarhaven Keep • J. S. Fletcher

... centre pawn if he can prevent his QKt from being exchanged. As is readily seen, White can attack Black's KP a second time with P-Q4, whilst after Black's P-Q3 any other defensive move would hinder development. These considerations lead to the first main line of defence in which Black plays 3. ... P-QR3. After 4. B-R4 Black has the option of releasing the pin by playing P-QKt4 at some opportune moment. If White elects to exchange his Bishop for the Kt forthwith, he can remove the Black centre ...
— Chess Strategy • Edward Lasker

... and who had held on to their positions so desperately, were fighting all the while, not so much to hold the particular positions in which they were, as to gain time, to resist as long as possible, to thwart the enemy in his intentions, to delay his advance, and to keep him away from the main line of defence till such time as reinforcements could reach them. Very gallantly had the thin line of heroes carried out their purpose, holding on, often enough, till they were killed to the last man. They had made the Kaiser's troops pay dearly for every inch of ground; and, whereas ...
— With Joffre at Verdun - A Story of the Western Front • F. S. Brereton

... forward in the afternoon to the junction of the Teche with the Atchafalaya, went into bivouac. The next morning began the ascent of the Teche. The 8th Vermont was thrown over to the east or left bank of the bayou, while the main line moved forward on the west bank to attack the Cotton, now in plain sight. The gunboats led the movement, necessarily in line ahead, owing to the narrowness of the bayou. On either bank Weitzel's line of battle, with skirmishers ...
— History of the Nineteenth Army Corps • Richard Biddle Irwin

... can, in fact, be seen detaching from his main line several companies of Guards to check the aims of ...
— The Dynasts - An Epic-Drama Of The War With Napoleon, In Three Parts, - Nineteen Acts, And One Hundred And Thirty Scenes • Thomas Hardy

... back from the river about sixty yards and parallel to it. Between was the main line of the C. & S. C, four clear tracks unbroken by switch or siding. On the wharf, along with a big pile of timber, was the beginning of a small spouting house, to be connected with the main elevator by a belt ...
— Calumet "K" • Samuel Merwin and Henry Kitchell Webster

... it's this way," replied the young fellow. "The Ajax is on a spur that runs out from the main line at Ophir, and the train only runs between there and Ophir twice a week, Wednesdays and Saturdays. Let's see, this is Wednesday; we'll get into Ophir to-morrow, and you'll have to wait over until Saturday, unless you hire a rig to take you out there, and that's pretty expensive ...
— At the Time Appointed • A. Maynard Barbour

... to the Naauwpoort and Gatacre to the Stormberg district. Buller soon found it necessary to order Naauwpoort to be re-occupied, as that town would have afforded a useful base to the enemy from which the main line of railway could be raided in the neighbourhood of De Aar. French arrived at Naauwpoort on November 20 and was for some weeks engaged in protecting the lines and in ...
— A Handbook of the Boer War • Gale and Polden, Limited

... like to have you with me on a new venture I have in mind. You probably have not heard of it here, but it is an assured fact that the railroad company are about to build a cut-off that will shut out Tower completely and put Hardup on the main line. In fact, they have actually started work at the other end, and though they are always very secretive about a thing like that, I happen to have a friend on the inside, so that my information is absolutely authentic. I have raised fifty ...
— The Long Shadow • B. M. Bower

... artist comes in," said Si proudly, conscious that this was himself. He straightened up the main line of the body by bending the leg wires and set the head right by hunching the neck into the shoulders. "An Owl always looks over its shoulder," he explained, but took no notice of Sam's query as to "whose shoulder he expected it to look over." He set ...
— Two Little Savages • Ernest Thompson Seton

... with him persistently after he had boarded the rough "accommodation" that carried him to the main line, where he must wait for the thunderous arrival of the long express train that was to carry him across the broad and splendid State of Washington. Idaho and Oregon were left behind. The magnificent wheat belt spread from horizon to horizon, and harvesters paused to ...
— The Plunderer • Roy Norton



Words linked to "Main line" :   path, route, itinerary



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