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Over the weeks and months that followed, the National Transportation Safety Board, or NTSB for short, would conclude, although

not conclusively, that the Lucknow Disaster, as it would come to be known, was caused by a “hot box.”

A “hot box” was in actuality a lubricated journal bearing on one of the tanker car’s wheels. It was believed that the lubricant

had leaked out, which caused the bearing to overheat. Sparks from the overheating would have progressed to fire, and before

long the axle would break, causing one of the car’s wheels to fall off. These so-called “hot boxes” were all supposed to have

been phased out years earlier, but clearly some cars were still equipped with them.

Once the wheel fell off, that car—the forty-third in a ninety-two-car train that was being pulled by one Albany the Tanner and Hillman families, Delbert Dorfman’s

mother—mourned no more.

Wendell Comstock caught a break. He had already moved away.

The only one in the town at the time of the disaster who did not die was the owner and manager of Choo-Choo’s Trains.

Before choosing to lie low for a while, Nabler took a stroll about the town before hundreds of emergency responders descended,

and marveled at what had happened. Bodies everywhere he went. Unparalleled devastation.

Those who operated within the sliver, the ones who’d brought down jets and caused dams to burst and set entire apartment build ings on fire, well, Edwin Nabler felt he could hold his head up with the best of them now.

He would have to think about how to move forward. For anyone else in the sliver, this would be a crowning achievement, no

doubt about it.

But Nabler was not done yet.