A typical lithograph, "Across the Continent," by Francis Palmer, printed by Currier & Ives in 1868, pictures a train barreling westward toward the open prairie while leaving a pair of Indians literally in its smoke.

With each train barreling toward the other at more than 40 miles an hour, Mr. Cazahous had only a few minutes to avert a catastrophe.

But, as Maclean points out, a firestorm not only blots out vision with sheets of flame and torrents of smoke; its approach is made known by a roar like that of a train barreling out of a tunnel.

He was conducting the orchestra in London for "The Woman in White" - the new $8.5 million Andrew Lloyd Webber musical - when he first saw the show's computer-animated train barreling toward him from a dark tunnel, its wheels rumbling and whistle screaming.

To one side is a vivid blue sky seen through a horizontal window that suggests a train barreling across India, to the other side a classical column, redolent of Italy.

I've had nightmares about that, about the train barreling ahead and me tumbling down, my body squashed under metal wheels, blood spurting in all directions.

Mr. Gissler was inspired by old movie stills in which the romantic and dramatic action was in an upper berth on a train barreling through the night.