Locomotive by Brian Floca is a non-fiction book written primarily in free verse. The book follows a family as they ride a transcontinental steam engine train in summer of 1869. The train trip starts in Omaha Nebraska and ends in San Francisco, California. The story details the workers, passengers, landscape, and the effects of building and operating the first transcontinental railroad.

Locomotive by Brian Floca is about the crews that make the steam locomotives run and how they do it. The story starts with a family that is heading West at the Omaha, Nebraska train station. They are hoping to start a new and better life.  It is the summer of 1869 and the train, the crews and family are riding America’s first transcontinental railroad, just completed.

In the pages of this book are the details of their trip. The crew and family experiences, the sounds, speed, and strength of the locomotive. There is an explanation of how they keep the locomotives running.  Learn the purpose of a Johnson bar, whistle, and throttle lever and how they make a steam engine run. Experience the wide-open empty country, the Rocky and Serra Nevada Mountains and the desert. Watch it go over trestles, under snow sheds and through tunnels. There were no dining cars, so the train stopped at a station for the passengers and crew to eat. At the same time, they changed the locomotive.

The thrill of the travel from the plains to the mountains to the ocean are illustrated with words and pictures in Locomotive by Brian Floca . You can hear the hiss of the steam, feel the heat of the engine and watch the landscape race by with illustrations and words. You experience the train trip with the brakeman, fireman, engineer, conductor and family.

Come and ride the rails in 1869 on the transcontinental railroad in Locomotive by Brian Floca. The inside front cover is a map illustrating the route and the stops the train made on its journey west to San Francisco, California. The inside back cover explains how a steam locomotive works. You will love the trip in Locomotive by Brian Floca.