American begged to follow vehicle on rails, getting run down (8)
I believe the answer is:
trampled
'run down' is the definition.
The answer and definition are not the same part of speech. However, past participle verbs and adjectives can occasionally mean the same thing.
'american begged to follow vehicle on rails' is the wordplay.
'american' becomes 'Am' (abbreviation in some contexts).
'begged' becomes 'pled' (I've seen this in another clue).
'to follow' is a charade indicator (letters next to each other) (some letters go after or follow others).
'vehicle on rails' becomes 'tr' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'am'+'pled'='ampled'
'ampled' put after 'tr' is 'TRAMPLED'.
'getting' acts as a link.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for trampled that I've seen before include "crushed" , "Trodden underfoot" , "Trod roughly underfoot" , "Walked heavily or roughly" .)