Chapter 20 and the Epilogue have been submitted to the moderators and will post soon. Chapter 20 ends with a teaser leading into Book 4, Railroad, which is currently a work in progress.
Speaking of Railroad, the comments from Old Rotorhead and others regarding size and speed of trains, delivery difficulties, types of rails, etc, were all 'spot on'! However, there is no need to suspend belief in this part of the storyline. Baldwin Steamworks was one of the earliest commercial builders of railroad steam engines, not to mention one of the largest and longest lived enterprise of its kind (almost 150 years). Baldwin's early years are fairly well documented in a scanned pdf copy of book (see the FACTS page of my website for a link). Two items of note. First, no two engines were built exactly alike until near the turn of century. It was a time of research and experimentation not to mention different requirements given by each customer. Second, Baldwin based their early success on their business model of breaking each engine down and shipping most them where ever the customer wanted. Each engine was accompanied by a chief engineer and mechanics who originally built the engine. On arrival they would reassemble the engine and train those who would operate them. It was all part of the final price. Did the customer need rails or rail strapping? No problem. Baldwin would also either procure and ship the rails (with a markup of course) or point the customer to suppliers they frequently used. Hope this resolves the issues expressed in the public comments. If not, feel free to let me know in either email or the public comments.
A note on use of the song Danny Boy in this story. Many readers have let me know in email that Danny Boy wasn't written until 1913 and it couldn't have been one of the Padre's favorite songs. They also were kind enough to give the background on tunes Danny Boy were probably based on. I knew that Danny Boy wasn't written until the early 1900s but it just 'fit' the story so I used it anyway.
My thanks to bdwight1 and coullpert for identifying a dreaded homophone in Chapter 18 and an awkward sentence in the same chapter, respectively.
A very special thanks to grisbuff for sending me diff files for all three books with suggested corrections and changes as well!!
Look for Railroad to start posting in October. Until then, enjoy the stories from the many fine authors on this site. Wishing you all stay healthy and safe!