December 29, 1876, did not begin as a legend. It began as weather, the sort of Lake Erie weather that has always made honest people glance at the window and reconsider their plans. A blizzard rolled in with the hard confidence of something older than railroads, older than schedules, older than the idea that human beings can bargain with nature if they print the timetable in bold type. Snow came in sheets, wind drove it sideways, and the whole landscape around Ashtabula turned into a white blur with sharp edges. The railroad still ran, because that is what railroads did in the nineteenth century. They sold the public speed and certainty, and they sold themselves something even more intoxicating, the belief that steel and ambition could tame the continent.

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