DANGER CAY: Chapter 40 — Which Way Did She Go ?
The engine featured in the last panel is that of the Twentieth Century Limited, a famous train running between New York and Chicago between 1906 and 1962. It gave its name to a Broadway play, Twentieth Century, by Ben Hecht and Charles MacArthur, set on board the train, which was made into a movie in 1934 starring John Barrymore and Carole Lombard and later adapted into a musical, On the Twentieth Century.  This would have been the train Ginger takes to Chicago… that is if she were actually going there. In 1938, the New York Central Railroad commissioned a famous industrial designer to give its streamliners a makeover, giving the the 20th Century Limited an Art Deco look. I’m taking a historical liberty by inserting the 1938 design here in Ginger’s 1935, because it is so iconic to the era.
For the sake of a dramatic panel, I am assuming that the Creepy Guy who has been following Ginger had the misfortune to jump off the Chicago-bound train just as the New York bound train was arriving on a parallel track. Oo… hard cheese, Creepy Guy.
The silver railroad tank with the conical top featured in the bottom center panel looks like a real-world ex-railroad water tank making news in my childhood hometown of Rangely, Colorado. Remote, miles from any rail line, the railroad tank was moved and put near a power plant in the 1950’s, but never filled and used; in the 70’s, its exotic acoustics were discovered by a traveling musician, and in the 2000’s it has been remodeled into a recording and performing studio and become quite the sensation. And it looks pretty much just as you, unwittingly, captured it here, Kurt!