Chapter 3 demonstrates how James uses railway journeys to dramatize the potentially endless and inherently sociable principle of narrative relations that he outlines in his Preface to Roderick Hudson. Through readings of The Sacred Fount and The American Scene, I argue that these texts evince a particular concern with ‘stopping-places’, specifically invoking the railway’s associations with distribution and supply. In The Sacred Fount, relationships operate in ways that suggest the railway’s own temporal and alimentary economy, as the train journey opening the novel tropes a continuing disquiet surrounding social contact, as well as providing a context for its central concern about the transfer of ‘resources’. The second half of the chapter examines the representation of similar anxieties throughout The American Scene. From his seat in the Pullman railcar, James is perturbed by the sense of moving ‘without personal effort or suffered transfer’, associating the Pullman’s innovative continuity, in particular, with the difficulty of social and cultural differentiation. In essays like ‘The Future of the Novel’ James deprecates the railway’s role as an arbiter of literary and critical taste.