The Big Train(Rusty C. Winters) THE BIG TRAIN


I was just three years old and lived in a northern Minnesota town of about 150 people. It was a spring morning because I could still smell the aroma of raked up leaves that were burned from the day before. The sidewalk in front of our house was wide and very cold this morning; I had no shoes on and was out and about. It was fun opening the big gate on the white picket fence at our front sidewalk; shutting it and setting the lock. I remember hearing a morning dove’s call and saw her sitting on the high line wire above me when all of a sudden I heard the shrill whistle of a train at the Depot in my little town. Without asking my mom, who was in the house, I hit the road towards the sound that had called me like a deer to a fresh watering pond.

In a few minutes my little pitter patter feet had gone two blocks to the wooden sidewalk that crossed the ditch in front of the Depot. The nails in the boards were so cold and prickly as I snuck up to the stairway that would put my little three foot frame up on the wooden platform of the Depot where all the goods and mail were unloaded onto this gigantic wagon with steel wheels. As I ascended the stairs I saw it; the world’s largest Black Steam Locomotive sitting at rest on the sidetrack to the stockyard where some cattle had been put into a Big Brown Boxcar. The engine was spitting steam from everywhere; out of the stack, under the frame, and out the sides. How could this big black giant work if it was losing all it’s pep?

I snuck down to the tracks from the platform and sat on the west rail facing east and remember how cold the big long rail was and how far north both of the rails went until they disappeared. Wow! What was up north? Then I saw him! The engineer in the seat of the Big Black Steam Engine. He was dressed in blue dirty denim bibs and wore a hat that bellowed out and made his head look five times bigger than mine. He was leaning out of the red colored four pane window on the engine looking north and south for anything in his way. I sat very still in hopes that he wouldn’t see me and sush me away. Then the man crawled out of the engine with this gigantic oil can and disappeared into the steam of the engine’s wheels. Wow! What an oil can! The spout must have been three feet long and the cup must have held a gallon of oil.

After a few minutes the man returned to the engine and crawled back into the cab and I could see him moving around in there. Then he stuck his head out again and looked at me and waved. Wow! What a feeling! He knew I was there and he reached up to a rope in the cab and pulled it. The sound of that whistle from fifty feet away was so loud and beautiful that I could feel a tingling in my cold feet that were now almost numbed by the granite rocks and black timbers on the tracks. Like a journey starting to a new world, the Big Black Engine spit more steam out of the stack and steam blew everywhere until the black engine disappeared in a cloud. Then by luck the engine came back into view and the engineer stuck his head out of the red window and the Big Black Engine’s wheels began to spin but the engine did not move. In a burst the engine slowed down and the man eased the throttle slowly and the Big Black Engine started moving north with a Puff and a Hiss; then another Puff and Hiss. The engine was moving the Box Car full of brown cows with big horns north up the tracks. The engine seemed like it was a mile away when it went into reverse; left the box car and was coming back my way. Wow! What a smokey – steamy mess. There was soot and steam everywhere.

The Big Black Engine moved onto the main track now and I stood up to see the engine hook on to the rest of the train which I could see had a red caboose on it. Then in an instant the Big Black Engine huffed and puffed and went forward and north. The engineer waved to me as he went by and the engine spit a cloud of steam and I watched as they all went north and disappeared into the horizon, but the steam lingered and stayed even after the train had disappeared. I was so sad that the train had gone and that my buddy in the cab had left town in a gust of smoke and steam.

Then I heard it! My mom’s voice! Alan! Alan! Oh Oh! I was in hot water now! I stuck my head over the edge of the platform and saw my mother’s smile and went running to her like a puppy runs to its mom. I was warmed by her left hand on the very cold side walk as we strolled home to the white picket fence gate which I was proud to open. Into the house and eating breakfast: oatmeal and toast! Gosh was I hungry! Watching that Big Black Engine and dreaming of the day when I could drive one had really given me a big appetite.

In weeks to come I asked my mom to take me back to the depot to see that big engine again. I walked to the depot to see the big engine but it was never there. I walked down the platform many times and saw where the Depot Operator sat with a telephone that was mounted to an accordion. I also remember the teletype keypad which never moved as I looked over the bottom of the window to see in. The hook where the Depot Operator hung the mail to be picked up was really tall. How did he ever get that bag up there? So many questions and few answers. I would ask my mom. She would know.

One morning we drove our car east to the grocery store in my little town. It was called the Coop Store; owned by the farmers in the area. As we drove I saw a train and an engine parked at the stock yards and loading box cars much like the Big Black Engine had done, but something had changed; the engine was orange, there was no steam and the whistle was replaced with a honker! What ever happened to my Big Black Engine and my buddy who waved at me? Where did that engine go when it went north? Where was he? I asked my mom and she didn’t know either. Why do things change and suddenly old happy and safe items are gone forever?

The Depot is gone now. The depot sign remains. No trains. No steam. No cattle. No box cars. No wooden sidewalks to the platform. Gosh, isn’t life a maze of change, and isn't it so hard to let go?






This is a true story. The year was the Spring of 1950 in a little Farming Community called Beltrami, Minnesota.
11/05/2001 – Author Rusty Winters
Copyright: © ACO00011 - 2011

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