The full physical & social cost of South Africa's 20th century mining revolution, based on the exploitation of cheap, commoditised, black, migrant labour, has yet to be fully understood. The success of the system, which contributed to the evolution of the policies of spatial segregation & apartheid, depended, in large measure, on the physical distance between the labourer's home & places of work being successfully bridged by steam locomotives & a rail network. These night trains left deep scars in the urban & rural cultures of black communities, whether in the form of popular songs or in a belief in nocturnal witches' trains that captured & conveyed zombie workers to the region's most unpopular places of employment. Through careful analysis of the contrasting inward- & outward-bound legs of the migrants' rail journey, the author shows how black bodies were 'recruited', transported & worked in the repressive system.