I found an 1889 magazine article which summarizes the revolutionary impact of the advent of the railroad and the upon rural life as well as describing the world that Buck Bannon walked into when left the farm and followed the new railroad tracks into Aven in the first chapter of DEVIL MAKE A THIRD.

FROM THE LINK:

THE SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC EFFECTS OF RAILROADS

 BY CHARLES BARNARD

 There are two ways in which the value of a life-time may be measured. It can be measured by years or by events. A man may live to be eighty years old and yet find at the end that his life was hardly worth living. A Mozart may die at thirty-five and measure his life by the birth of great compositions, each an event in the musical history of the world. One woman may spend long quiet years upon a farm with only the few great days of every woman's life, birth, marriage, motherhood, and death. Another may, before she is twenty, see all the great cities of Europe and America, meet many notable people, write a book, or take part in artistic life, and at twenty-five be older in experience than many a rural housewife at seventy-five. Years do not count. A man lives by events. 

Nations and people have their lives, and the life of a nation may also be counted by years or by experience. During the so-called Dark Ages all the nations of Europe were practically at a complete stand-still. The earth, indeed, measured the time into days, years, and centuries, yet there was no progress, because nothing happened. More events in national lives came in the seventeenth century than in the five hundred years that went before. More important events have filled the ninety years of this century than in all the Christian era. We live in eventful years today. We experience more in a year than our forefathers in all their lives...

...If we consider the actual value of a life, we must see that he lives best who does the most. Experience, not years, is the measure of a life. Clearly we can experience more today than our fathers, because we are no longer tied to one place. The railroad and steamboat have set us all free from the bondage to place. https://reclaimalabama.blogspot.com/2022/04/the-social-and-economic-effects-of.html