In the middle of a snowstorm, deep in Alaska, a train is hurtling at breakneck speed toward an unknown destination. The engineer is dead, and there is no one to stop the steel behemoth. On board are two convicts who have escaped from a penal colony and a young woman, and every passing kilometer brings them closer to either death or salvation...

The United States, during the Great Depression. Hard times force union activist Bill Shelley to become the leader of a gang of train robbers. This is how he earns the nickname “Limpy” and wins the heart of Bertha Thompson, a girl from a small town in Arkansas with the criminal nickname “Freight Car.”