Lightning Express : or, The rival academies by Oliver Optic
"Lightning Express; or, The Rival Academies" by Oliver Optic is a juvenile adventure novel written in the late 19th century. It centers on a student-run railroad and an escalating rivalry between the Toppleton Institute and the Wimpleton Academy along Lake Ucayga. The story follows Wolf Penniman, a level-headed young engineer, alongside the imperious Tommy Toppleton and the reckless Waddie Wimpleton, as schoolboy politics, railroading, and military-style drills spark real-world tensions. Themes of
leadership, pride, and moral duty frame the spirited contests between the two academies. The opening of the novel unfolds at a noisy stockholders’ meeting of the student-managed Lake Shore Railroad, where Tommy Toppleton’s heavy-handed presidency faces a revolt. After a procedural tussle, the boys adjourn to Grass Springs for an election and a celebratory supper; Tommy is humiliatingly voted out on the first ballot, restored on a second only because his rival, Skotchley, refuses the office. The students then choose the Horse Shoe island for their annual encampment—largely to needle their Wimpleton rivals—and prepare a rapid march. Wolf, urged by Major Toppleton to “keep the peace,” helps expedite transport, but at Grass Springs the Wimpleton flotilla blocks the channel. Tommy rashly orders a steamer to force passage; Wolf and the captain try to avoid harm, yet Waddie leads a bold boarding that seizes the forward deck, locks Company B below, and stops the engine. With the steamer captured and tempers high, Waddie tries to coerce Wolf into running the machinery, setting the stage for a dangerous standoff. (This is an automatically generated summary.)
Terry Jeffress and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)
