On taking decisions for the players and railroading.

Railroading is most of the time used as a pejorative term. It means taking the decision away from a player or simply not allowing the player to act as he would like to, and by doing so destroying the main purpose of a roleplaying game.

There are situations though where taking minor decisions for the players can actually improve the game.
I use this from time to time to lead my players to a situations they would otherwise not have ended into.

Instead of asking the players, what will your characters be doing for the remainder of the evening? Where will they be eating? When will they be going to sleep? What will they be doing if they can't sleep?
You can go ahead and take some of the decisions for them.

"You had dinner in the Hotels restaurant and finished the evening in the smoking bar with some glasses of Brandy.
Around midnight, all of you are back up in your rooms. It's around 2am now and Max, you still weren't able to fall asleep. Your friends don't seem to have the same problem and you can hear them snoring through the thin walls of your room. You decide to have a walk downstairs and have a smoke in the hotel bar. Arriving on ground floor and turning to the main entrance hall, you see a trail of blood on the carpet leading to the door on the left end of the corridor."

I just took multiple unimportant decisions for the players and ended putting one of them into a nasty situation.
This is where you put the spotlight back on the player and have him now take the important decision.

You shouldn't do this if your players told you beforehand that they had specific plans for that night or that the decisions you are taking for a character goes against that players idea for his character. Else you end up railroading again.
Do it like Gandalf, "If you're referring to the incident with the dragon, I was barely involved.  All i did was giving your uncle a little nudge out of the door."