In the book, the railroad emerges in human terms of strife, struggle, victory and defeat. The reader learns not only what happened, but why, and who made it happen.

EXCERPT

In the first half of the twentieth century, the Lackawanna and Wyoming Valley Railroad carried its passengers between Scranton and Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, through valleys deeply scarred by man's efforts to extract anthracite coal from one of its few sources in the United States. Huge coal breakers dominated lesser structures clustered around mine shafts and slopes. These, in turn, were surrounded by stockpiles of timbers destined to support the roofs of underground tunnels, hopper cars for transporting the "black diamonds" to market, large piles of coal and dumps of culm. Spontaneous combustion had caused many of these culm dumps, consisting of mine waste, to explode and burn.