Once having been granted these facilities, it was left to me to make my own way, and in this I was never without friends — particularly amongst the engineers with whom I lived. There were the pilots, too, and the radio operators, and the men themselves; without exception they put themselves to great trouble and personal inconvenience to give me as complete a picture as possible of this astonishing project. They are too numerous to mention individually, but should they read this, I would like them to know that I remember them vividly and with affection, for they were very real people. I would also like to make it clear that, whilst I have had to make use of certain executive titles, the names and characters of the men occupying these positions in the book, and their actions, are purely imaginary.
The second visit was made three years later when the book was half-completed. I was on my way up to the Eskimo country to the northwest of the Hudson’s Bay and I stopped off at Goose — primarily to check up on my description of this isolated community, and also to work out a satisfactory basis for the expedition’s radio link. Here, Mr Douglas Ritcey of Goose Radio, who is himself a ‘ham’ operator, was most helpful, and I would like to record that he has allowed me to use his own radio set-up as the basis of Ledder’s.
Altogether I travelled some 15,000 miles in quest of the material for this book — one of the most interesting journeys I have undertaken. I sincerely hope that, in the result, I have achieved my purpose of conveying a picture of one of the last great railways to be built, the sort of men who built it, and not least of all some idea of the bleak and desolate nature of the Labrador itself.