At the height of the American railroad’s significance, railroad superintendent of the Blue Ribbon line, Martin Garrity, loses his position when his boss, Lemuel Barstow, loses favor amongst the other executives in their company. As an Irish immigrant, Garrity’s work for O.R.&T. has been very important in the journey to success for him and his wife, Jewel, thus the job loss is a major blow. Barstow, however, is offered a position at Ozark Central, a rival railroad company. He hires Garrity, and asks him to fix the stretch of rail between St. Louis and Kansas City, as the competition for a mail contract in that stretch is soon to be up in March, and Barstow wants to win the contract to get revenge on O.R.&T. Garrity goes to work on his new job, but soon finds that he is largely disrespected for having unwisely bought a snowplow for the job that is far more expensive than necessary. This is a major blow to his self-esteem. Garrity’s job is completed successfully, yet his snowplows are still an embarrassment. The head of the company asks him to move them out of sight. Garrity prays for snow as March approaches so that his plows will get some use. Shortly before the mail contracts are released, a strong blizzard comes through. With the use of Garrity’s plows, the Ozark Central trains remain on time, while all other trains in Missouri are dramatically delayed. Garrity works hard to keep the trains running through the blizzard, and, after it passes, goes home, exhausted. He is awoken to a telegram from Barstow, which tells him to go try to open his old line, the Blue Ribbon, which, if unable to run even with Garrity’s temporary supervision, would be the ultimate proof of the company’s inability to run without Garrity and Barstow. Garrity goes to run the Blue Ribbon, and quickly realizes that he would be unable to purposely do a bad job running the train. He successfully completes the route, and finds Barstow happy, to his surprise, as his whole plan was to show the two mens’ competence, and create a merger of O.R.&T with Barstow as president and Garrity as general superintendent.