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The Wrecker smiled It was the railroad president’s personal train All hell was about to break loose inside the luxurious cars when he learned that the mountain had fallen into his tunnel, and it was a safe bet Kevin’s “favored feould not feel quite so favored tonight
A htconstruction yard of workmen’s bunkhouses, s thick withtheir loco area, deep in a hollow, could be seen the oil lamps of an end-of-the-tracks caht cars housing the makeshift dance halls, saloons, and brothels that followed the ever- construction yard
It would bea lot more slowly now
To clear the rockfall from the tunnel would take days A week at least to shore the weakened rock and repair the daed the railroad quite thoroughly this tied to identify as left of Kevin, the only witness who could connect hiry hothead heard spouting radical talk in the hobo jungle before he accidentally blew hidom come
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BY 1907, THE “SPECIAL” TRAIN WAS AN EMBLEM OF WEALTH AND power in Ae in Newport and a town house on Park Avenue or an estate on the Hudson River shuttled between their palatial abodes in private railcars attached to passenger trains But the titans-the men ned the railroads-traveled in their specials, private trains with their own locomotives, able to steam anywhere on the continent at their owners’ whim The fastest and ed to the president of the Southern Pacific Railroad, Osgood Hennessy
Hennessy’s train was painted a glossy vermilion red, and hauled by a powerful Baldwin Pacific 4-6-2 locomotive black as the coal in its tender His private cars, na-dead wife,by ten feet wide They had been built of steel, to his specifications, by the Pullman Company and outfitted by European cabinetmakers
Nancy No 1 contained Hennessy’s office, parlor, and state roo marble tubs, brass beds, and a telephone that could be connected to the telephone system of any city he rolled into Nancy No 2 carried a modern kitchen, storeroo rooe car had roohter Lillian’s Packard Gray Wolf auto car and luxurious Pullineers, bankers, and lawyers engaged in building the Cascades Cutoff
Once on the main line, Hennessy’s special could rocket hio in three, and New York in four, switching engine types to h to serve his lifelong ambition to control every railroad in the country, his special enetic induction systees between the speeding train and the telegraph wires running parallel to the tracks
Hennessy himself was a wisp of an oldHe had a ferret’s alert black eyes, a cold gaze that discouraged lying and extinguished false hope, and the heart, his fleeced rivals swore, of a hungry Gila monster Hours after the tunnel collapse, he was still in shirtsleeves, dictating a uests was ushered in
The smooth and polished United States senator Charles Kincaid arrived ily handsome His hair was slick, his -or if he was thinking at all-escaped froary smile was at the ready
Hennessy greeted the politician with barely veiled contempt
“In case you haven’t heard, Kincaid, there’s been another accident And, by God, this one is sabotage”
“Good Lord! Are you sure?”
“So daency”