Atlas Shrugged

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 "Oh, sure. But nobody's going to make any trouble about that. No train's ever on schedule these days,"
"Then do you intend to leave us blocking your track forever?"
"We've got nothing due till Number 4, the northbound passenger out of Laurel, at eight thirty-seven
A.M. You can wait till then. The day-trick dispatcher will be on then. You can speak to him,"
"You blasted idiot! This is the Comet!"
"What's that to me? This isn't Taggart Transcontinental. You people expect a lot for your money. You've
been nothing but a headache to us7 with all the extra work at no extra pay for the little fellows."
His voice was slipping into whining insolence. "You can't talk to me that way. The time's past when you
could talk to people that way."
She had never believed that there were men with whom a certain method, which she had never used,
would work; such men were not hired by Taggart Transcontinental and she had never been forced to
deal with them before.
"Do you know who I am?" she asked, in the cold, overbearing tone of a personal threat.
It worked. "I . . . I guess so," he answered.
"Then let me tell you that if you don't send a crew to me at once, you'll be out of a job within one hour
after I reach Bradshaw, which I'll reach sooner or later. You'd better make it sooner."
"Yes, ma'am," he said.
"Call out a full passenger train crew and give them orders to run us to Laurel, where we have our own
men."
"Yes, ma'am.” He added, "Will you tell headquarters that it was you who told me to do it?"
"I will."
"And that it's you who're responsible for it?"
"I am."
There was a pause, then he asked helplessly, "Now how am I going to call the men? Most of them
haven't got any phones."
"Do you have a call boy?"
"Yes, but he won't get here till morning."
"Is there anybody in the yards right now?"
"There's the wiper in the roundhouse."