On the Iron at Big Cloud — Frank L. Packard

A book about railroad life on tbe Rocky Mountain division of a big transcontinental line, where exciting and unusual events happen and common men may, in an instant's time, turn into heroes. Before the author made writing his profession he spent four years in the engineering department of the road when it "dug, blasted, burrowed, and trestled its right of way through the mountains," and thus got his inspiration at first hand.