Ayn Rand · 1957 · rail

Ayn Rand's 1957 novel, the vast and divisive epic of industrialists who go on strike against a collapsing collectivist society. Its beating heart is a railroad: Dagny Taggart's Taggart Transcontinental, and the John Galt Line she builds in defiance across the Colorado mountains out of Hank Rearden's revolutionary metal. The triumphant first run of that line is one of the most famous railway journeys in fiction. Wherever you stand on Rand, the trains are the soul of the book.

1. 1
   New York

   Dagny Taggart runs the great Taggart Transcontinental railroad from New York, fighting to keep the trains moving as the country quietly grinds to a halt.

2. 2
   Chicago

   West through the industrial heart of America, the rails carrying the freight that keeps a faltering civilisation alive.

3. 3
   Cheyenne

   At Cheyenne the new line branches south, the line everyone says will fail, laid with an untried green-blue metal.

4. 4
   Wyatt Junction

   The John Galt Line, run in Rearden Metal across the Colorado mountains to Ellis Wyatt's oil fields, and on its first run it flies.