A short stretch of railroad track used to store rolling stock or enable trains on the same line to pass

Usage examples of sidetrack.

The swift run could not be made, and the train kept running without a stop, if it were not for the fact that the despatcher puts trains on the sidetrack so that the special need not be delayed, and he does it in such a manner that the regular business of the road shall not be interfered with.

Never before had he been able to comprehend a man as brilliant as Galois letting himself get sidetracked from his real work long enough to become involved in such an idiotic thing as a duel over a woman.

The population of the town itself ran about three-fourths white, one-fourth Native, mostly Yupik, with some Inupiaq transplants from up north, some Aleut transplants from down south, and one lone Tlingit family that got sidetracked during a move from Sitka to Nome back in the fifties, homesteaded a hundred and sixty acres twenty miles up the Icky road, and never left.

He had been sidetracked by his need to make money, distracted by the fuss of living, misrouted from his original goal.

When Lord Varek was asked why they had allowed themselves to be sidetracked to Remagev, he replied that Stronghold was not the objective.

It had a lot of rabbit genes to enable it to survive in its sparse environmentits "hooves" still retained vestigial claws from the toes they were derived from, and its "horns" were sidetracked bicuspids, channeled up through the skulland its breathing apparatus owed a lot to porpoises.

French had battled on, determined to declare a winner among the five burgundies, though he was so sidetracked with Dyloft his heart wasn't in it.

Sanglier understood, too, after a slightly longer explanation, and agreed because he had no alternative, even though it would be condoning the computer illegality for which he'd sidetracked Claudine and the German.

Desie attended Georgia State University with the plan of becoming a school-teacher but was sidetracked in her senior year by her engagement to a professional basketball player named Gorbak Didovlic, who stood a shade over seven feet tall and spoke no English.

I imagine that has something to do with the way I feel, and my inability to write, but--but I'm getting off on a sidetrack.

Those plans had been somewhat sidetracked two decades ago when the Pahkwa-thanh had joined the Federation and a whole new hunting ground of alien diseases had been opened to him, daring him to chase them down and wrestle them into submission.

Sometimes it was a monthly, if Dave got sidetracked by other interests (maple-sugaring, cider-making, rocket-building, and car-customizing, just to name a few), and then there would be jokes I didn't understand about how Dave's Rag was a little late this month or how we shouldn't bother Dave, because he was down in the basement, on the Rag.

The original plan was to channel John the Baptist, but somewhere it all got sidetracked and the subject recited passages from the Bible, claiming to be one of the twelve disciples.