An account of the lives of teenage freight-train riders which offers a perspective on the presumed romanticism of the road and cautionary legacy of the Great Depression. From "middle class gentility to scrabble-ass poor," the undiscriminating Great Depression forced 4,000,000 Americans away from their homes and onto the tracks in search of food and lodging. Of this number, a disturbing 250,000 of the transients were children. "Riding the Rails" recounts the experiences and painful recollections of these now-elderly survivors of the rail.