The Titus Brothers Contractors company have won a government contract in Peru to blast a tunnel through a mountain and connect two isolated railroad lines.

The deadline is approaching, and the contractors have hit a literal wall: excessively hard rock which defies conventional blasting techniques.

Mr. Damon, Tom's very good friend, arrives in the middle of this conversation, and is unaware of the situation.

On the way, they encounter Professor Swyington Bumper, who is on a lifelong quest to locate the lost city of Pelone.

In the 1990s TV series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles, Indiana Jones is dating Tom Swift's author's daughter, and in one scene assists Mr. Stratemeyer in forwarding the plot of Tom Swift and His Big Tunnel.