Awesome / Raising Steam

• Blink and you'll miss it; Professor Rincewind. He's even doing actual research now rather than just being the Faculty's lightning rod.^note He's been a professor since at least The Last Continent, if not Interesting Times, although those have been mostly sinecures that no-one else wanted.
• Moist causes Iron Girder to fly across a rickety bridge that cannot support her weight. Though in truth, some of the golems of Um are lifting her across, hidden by the mist.
• Near the end, it's revealed that due to all the attention Iron Girder has been getting as "Queen of the permanent way", she has in fact ascended to goddess of the railway. And what's more, Dick Simnel is clearly shown to be in control of her despite this, making good on his promise to control steam.
• "What is the goblin word for "Charge"?"
• Detritus and Bluejohn on a train that's being bombarded with large rocks. They decide to play tennis.
• Vimes and Moist fighting the grags side-by-side on a speeding train, with the Summoning Dark sign practically shining on Vimes' arm. Vetinari, disguised as a stoker, is fighting them off with a shovel.
• Moist saves the lives of two young children who were on the rails when the train was coming. He didn't do it for a photo opportunity or to make himself look better, he saw what was about to happen and nearly got himself killed saving those two kids.
• During the ride to Uberwald, Vimes sends out Cheery as a decoy Low King. When the grags attack the decoy they find, instead of the Low King, a "very angry and very female" dwarf.
  • There's some Fridge Brilliance here when it's later revealed that the Low King is really the Low Queen. Not only would the grags have been disgusted by this supposed perversion of their laws, they were probably just as frickin' humiliated that even if Cheery hadn't, for some reason, kicked their behinds, they still would have lost to a woman.
• The story that the old man tells of the treacle miners in the early parts of the book is both a Moment of Awesome and a heartwarming moment: Both dwarfs and humans are mining, in the same area but separate territories, while tensions over mining rights are high with both sides. And yet, when one of the two groups (nobody can remember if it was the humans or the dwarfs) is caught underground, the other group immediately comes to their rescue, defying orders and angry guards in order to do so:
  But of course that meant that they had to enter territory that required going through two bloody security barriers manned by armed guards. Guards, moreover, who were not that bothered about miners and were certainly not going to let any of the enemy down into their sovereign soil.
  All the miners had piled up against the barriers. Someone said, "We can't tackle them, they've got weapons!" and they looked at one another in what is known as wild surmise, and then another voice yelled, "But so have we, when you look at it the right way, and ours are bigger!" And the speaker waved his enormous fist and said, "And we’re mining every day, not standing around and looking smart."
  And so as one dwarf, or possibly human, they rushed the barricade and the guards, realizing they were failing to frighten people, ran for cover as the miners with the picks and shovels came down on them at speed and sixty miners were saved from a very sticky situation on both sides of the seam.
  Nothing official happened afterwards because officialdom didn’t want any part of the shame of it.
• The grags attack a wedding between a dwarf and a human. One dwarf guest was there only out of politeness despite disapproving of the mixed marriage as against dwarf tradition. Know what else is dwarf tradition? Having weapons at all times. The old dwarf took up sword and axe to defend the unarmed wedding party, because there are some things you just don't do.
• Rhys Rhysson taking back her Scone of Stone, revealing the truth about her gender and then just DARING anybody in the room to try and take the Scone. Nobody does.