The year is 1927, and the world is a booming and beautiful place. Golden necklaces and diamond rings favor women who are clad in fine fur coats. Velvet hats dance on men’s well groomed heads while their fingers fuss with new cigars. Spoiled children suck on lollipops the size of their heads, holding the hands of their mothers as they watch with wondering awe at the people who live on the streets.
It is a time of grandeur and wealth, of opportunity and change. But it is also a time of greed, secrecy, and the gritty truth.
Due to the overpopulation of New York City there is a flux of orphans. Not just orphans, but waifs, half-orphans, and the abused. Since the 1850s a program called Orphan Trains has transported thousands of unlucky children out of the East and into the Mid-West. These children are carted from town to town and shown across the country to a variety of people. Most kids end up living in large farm families, but a lucky few are plucked out to live with wealthy doctors or bankers.
The program was made in good faith and continued to blossom and provide for the children of America. However, through the roar of the early 20’s and with a change in authority, the Orphan Trains began to lose their spotless reputation. By 1925 the system was still thriving, but in its own quietly corrupt way. Children still get placed in new homes and the staff members still get paid, but the money that is supposed to circulate back into the program is stolen little by little by the supervisors and upper men. Because of this greed, the conditions on the train are unpredictable. What once was an awkward meet and greet during the adoption show has become a sort of child auction. The interior of the train cars are the surviving bits of the third original orphan train, the food is lousy or sometimes missing, and the rules of the train (and its enforcers) have grown to be strict and unforgiving.
Here on the Malcolm Train, the fifth and last train on the program, comes a story of interest. Tension is rising between the staff members and deception is lurking at every corner.
