In Mugby Junction Dickens creates and repeatedly reworks images drawn from the railroad to extend traditional Gothic motifs. As railway lines yield structural metaphors involving tracks, rails, derailing, signals, branches, stations and junctions, the eight separate tales comprising the 1866 Christmas number of All the Year Round are held together through a shared fictional investment in new technologies. Particularly intriguing is the way the stories explore the impact of technological change not simply on the everyday, but also on manifestations of the supernatural, on modern ideas of the uncanny.
