Also on Selah Jubilee Singers Vol 1 Document (DOCD 5499).

Most probably related is Roscoe Holcomb's 'Walk Around My Bedside' from the Holiness Church. RH 'High Lonesome Sound' Smithsonian/Folkways SF CD 40079.

The 'Life is like a mountain railroad' image and stanza may well have come from 'Life's Railway to Heaven' (Abbey/Tillman 1890) which Norm Cohen notes was modelled on an 1860's poem by Will Hays called 'The Faithful Engineer'.

--Stewie.