Panic on the Rails in our Thrilling Tales podcast

Two trains speed toward each other in a blizzard, as a killer wanders the night! Melodrama on the rails, in this week’s Thrilling Tales: Storytime for Grownups, available now! On May 20, 1920 the readers opening the new issue of Metropolitan magazine were captivated by a heart-stopping tale entitled The Signal Tower, by Wadsworth Camp. Never heard of him? Neither had I! Most of the details we know about the man come from biographies of his daughter Madeleine L’Engle, the beloved author of A Wrinkle in Time. Camp was known in his day as the author of several excellent mystery novels, many of which were adapted to the stage or screen.

The Signal Tower did very well for Camp, appearing in the 1920 edition of Best American Short Stories, the annual story collection started in 1915 and still published to this day. Camp’s spare, gripping tale concerns railroad signal men, the air traffic controllers of their day, managing a far flung network of signal towers and holding thousands of lives in their hands. Our hero faces an unbearable dilemma as two trains speed toward each other along the same track, while his drunken and vengeful coworker stalks toward his defenseless wife and child. Small wonder the story was loosely adapted into a silent film of the same name – you can watch the whole thing here. Or listen to the full story in our latest Thrilling Tales podcast.

     ~Posted by David W.