"The Celestial Railroad" is short story written as an allegory by American author Nathaniel Hawthorne. In it, Hawthorne parodies the seventeenth-century book The Pilgrim's Progress by John Bunyan, which portrays a Christian's spiritual "journey" through life. In this story, the pilgrim journeys by iron horse rather than by foot, the burden of sin that Bunyan portrays is pulled by the same train...