Symbol Analysis
Trains move. They move through cities, they move through the countryside, and they move through small little towns in the middle of nowhere. Even though "The Railway Train" is a short poem, we find a lot of landscape description in it. It's not only a poem about a train, in other words; it's also a poem about nature, cities, and all that good outdoors stuff.
Check out some examples:
l. 2: In the second line, we see the train moving through "valleys." The train is taking us right through the great outdoors.
l. 5: The train also makes its way around "a pile of mountains." More lovely nature images here.
l. 7: In this line, we move into a more urban landscape. We're no longer in the beautiful mountains and valleys, but in "shanties" and "by the sides of roads."
l. 14: The speaker describes the train as "punctual as a star." Again, an image of landscape—the night sky—is being evoked. The image is used to show us just how "punctual" the train is: it's as regular as the stars that appear in the sky every night.