We start a new tale.

An elegantly dressed porter marched across the gravel toward him and climbed the ladder to the cab.

“Mister Gordon, sir?” The porter’s accent revealed a close heritage from south of the border.  “Apologies of the station master, but he needs to see you upstairs.”  The porter gestured at  the second floor of the building, where the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe railroad had an operating office.

“On my way,” Bill Gordon answered.  He turned to his fireman.  “Steve, no idea how long this will be, but we have a lot of passengers waiting for us to get out of the way, which we should have done two hours ago, if ever that signal box changed.”

“I’ll keep the fires burning.  We just coaled and watered.  Should be no trouble.  I’ll whistle if it changes.”  Steve Smith nodded at his boss.

A short walk brought Gordon to the office, a large hall the width of the building.  The center of the hall was a map of a section of the railroad’s  tracks.  Small models flying numbered flags showed the location of trains.  Young men passed back and forth  between stacks of telegrams of and the table, making updates.

Railmaster Oscar Murphy shouted into a telephone, the station master at his side.

“I have no idea what is going on,” Murphy said emphatically, “and you can tell upstairs that.  Can you still hear me, or do we have to relay? Good! Something is working right.”

Worried station master Michael Eastwood saw Gordon approaching and pointed at the map. 

“Bill,” Michael said, “phone and telegraph lines south of here are down.  I can reach our first four signal towers.  The fifth, it has a phone, the phone rings, but there is no answer. South of there I tried reaching towers, local sheriffs,…nothing.  We had a telegram relayed from Phoenix through Los Angeles.  Everything is down north of there, starting thirty miles out.  The 204 reached Phoenix on time, two in the morning.  The 138 and 407 should have reached there, thirty minutes apart.  They did not.  No sign of them.  We had several large freights coming north, rather before dawn.  No sign of them, either.  Something big must have happened, avalanche, whatever.  I’m not sending more trains south, when they might need to back out.”