Content Warning: This section of the guide discusses death by suicide.

The run-down streets of New York at twilight fill Eddie Willers with a vague apprehension. He encounters an unhoused person who asks him the common rhetorical question, “Who is John Galt?” At the Taggart Transcontinental (TT) railway offices, Eddie provides the company president, Jim Taggart, with an unwelcome report on the honest state of the railway. The TT Rio Norte line through Colorado is in a bad state and being outcompeted by the rival Phoenix-Durango line, while the order of track to repair the line from Associated Steel, a company run by Jim’s friend, Orren Boyle, remains delayed.

Dagny Taggart is riding the Taggart Comet express train while listening to the brakeman whistle an unfamiliar symphony by retired composer Richard Halley. The train is halted by a faulty signal, and the driver refuses to act until Dagny takes responsibility and orders them to move forward on her authority. Once in New York, she informs a furious Jim that she’s cancelled the unfulfilled order of steel from Boyle and has instead ordered the rails from Hank Rearden.

A young employee, Owen Kellogg, meets with Dagny to quit his job.