Behind the Iron Horse: The People who Made the Trains Run in the Bellows Falls, Vermont Area (1941-1980), by Giro R. Patalano. Giro was a Boston & Maine railroadman for more than forty years, living in Bellows Falls Vermont. With a capacious memory, an unerring eye for telling detail, and an exquisite sense of irony, the author does much more than recall a personal part of the annals of local railroading. Behind the Iron Horse also provides fascinating glimpses of New England industrial history; of the post-Depression topography of the upper Connecticut River Valley—of landscape now altered, of structure long gone; of wartime practices on the New England home front; of the rich variety of contemporary social attitudes.208-page paperback