During the latter part of their high school work they had studied hard with ambition to become surveyors and civil engineers.

In their school vacations they had sought training and experience in the offices of an engineering firm in their home town of Gridley.

After being graduated from the Gridley High School, Tom and Harry had done more work in the same offices.

Then, in a sudden desire for advancement, and possessed by the longing for a wider field of endeavor, Tom Reade and Harry Hazelton had secured positions as "cub engineers" on the construction work that was being done to rush a new railway, system over the Rocky Mountains in Colorado.

The stern, hard work that lay before them, the many adventures in a rough wilderness, and the chain of circumstances that at last placed Tom Reade in charge of the railroad building, with Harry as first assistant engineer, are all told in the first volume of this present series, "_The Young Engineers In Colorado_." That great feat finished satisfactorily, the ambition of our young engineers led them further afield, as told in "_The Young Engineers in Arizona_." A great, man-killing quicksand had to be filled in and effectively stopped from shifting.