Rails & Ties

Rails amp Ties is a 2007 drama film directed by Alison Eastwood and written by Micky Levy. It tells the story of a young boy and his mentally ill widowed mother who commits suicide in her car by parking on a railroad track. The boy confronts the train engineer who accidentally killed his mother, urging him and his wife to raise him after escaping from an unkind foster mother. The two agree to raise him, however, it is later revealed that his wife is dying of breast cancer. Kevin Bacon portrays the train engineer, Marcia Gay Harden plays his sick wife, and Miles Heizer portrays the boy.

Davey has spent the first night after the incident with an empathetic social worker, Susan Garcia. However, she places the boy with a coldhearted, disciplinarian foster mother. Later on, after being confined to his room, he escapes by shattering the window. The authorities are alerted and a missing persons search is initiated. The boy obtains train conductor Tom Starks home address. He turns up at the Starks home and berates Tom for accidentally killing his mother in the train crash, but eventually he is placated. Toms wife Megan insists on letting the boy stay although Tom initially disapproves. Caring for Davey gradually helps the couple rebond with each other.Megan is suffering from breast cancer. Having already undergone a mastectomy, she has decided that she will no longer endure chemotherapy and must accept her inevitable death. The couple have no children, partly due to Megans illness and partly because of Toms job. Tom is unable to deal with his wifes illness and implores her to continue treatment. Meanwhile, the social worker, Susan, hearing that the boy may have sought out the Starks home, arrives at the house and even searches it, suspecting the boy is there, but finds only a visibly sick Megan Stark. The family continues to bond, but the social worker keeps an eye on the family. When she sees them out in the park for a picnic, she decides to call the police, but stops when she realizes that the boy is clearly part of a devoted family. ........

Source: Wikipedia