In "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" Irving wrote: "Many dismal tales were told about funeral trains, and mourning cries and wailings heard and seen about the great tree..." Since there was no rail transport in the 1790s (when the story takes place) what exactly does he mean by funeral trains?
A "train" in the general sense is a series of things following each other, e.g. a camel train, or the train of a dress. A funeral train is a line of people and possibly carriages following each other to the graveyard.
BTW, rail transport was used in mines during this period, but there were no steam locomotives.