in this third novel from the New TOM SWIFT Invention Adventures, the young inventor finds himself trying to help the President of the Inited States who has made a promise to build a speedy cargo train system before he leaves office at the end of the following year.
The problem is he has not done any work toward getting industrial companies involved until he makes the speech.
Swift Enterprises agrees to take on a couple parts of the program including digging the hundreds of miles of tunnels through the numerous mountains between Central California and just east of the Rockies. Tom also takes on design and creation of the locomotive engines for the trains.
But--and there is always a "but"--as other companies begin to drop out of the project Tom agrees to take on more and more until it starts looking like it will never be finished in time.
Tom runs afoul of the owner of another company who feels the Swifts are trying to take over all the choice, and lucrative, parts leaving his company with next to nothing.
