I spent most of my school years living just a block from a train track… We didn’t have lot of trains running through our small Georgia town, but it is still memorable. There was an afternoon train I recall Snd the engineer would through wrapped small candies out to kids who might be standing close by watching it pass.
Our daughter and her husband built a home alongside a much busier track in Birmingham, AL many years later. The trains on the trestle next door seemed to run through Birmingham all night long. Some were Amtrak passenger trains. Others were cargo. It was disconcerting the first time I visited our daughter’s home and discovered they had built next door to a train trestle. But now it’s a comforting reminder that life is going on, that business is continuous, that people’s needs are being met even while I am resting. Some time in the night I heard two passing trains mimicking and echoing one another’s whistles….a game the engineers play in the wee hours when the schedule is slower and borders on tedium? It made me smile. I could envision the two individuals on overnight duty performing the required task of whistling at every vehicle crossing, but to do it with a bit a flare and musicality was a surprise. Thank you, Lord, for allowing me to listen in on that brief interlude.
A third cousin of mine from Eufaula, AL. wrote me in 2016 when I first wrote about this:
“I, too, like to hear trains and they don’t bother one at night once a person gets used to them. In Cottondale, we had tracks there that ran N-S and E-W and intersected in town just a block or so from our parsonage. I loved hearing them come and go and still miss them! I don’t miss getting stuck at the crossing and having to wait for a hundred box cars to pass before being able to get on to my destination!!”