On Saturday, March 11, 2006, I went to downtown Rugby, North Dakota, to the depot where Amtrak stops to load and unload passengers morning and night. I wanted to see the train as it came through. You don't get to see that in every town, and Amtrak doesn't stop in every town it goes through. This is a report of what I saw.
There are six sets of rails at trackside north of the depot. To the east, across Main Street and on the other side of the tracks, stands a big grain elevator, one of those giants of the prairie. There used to be a railyard here for the Great Northern Railroad, back when rail was king, if you remember those days.
Inside the depot there is enough noise that I'm not sure I could even hear a train approaching. There is the deep growl of a furnace running somewhere in the building. The pop machine starts up and redoubles the roar. Something electronic beeps somewhere behind a closed door.
That young lady waiting to board the train is reading a book. She does not appear anxious or bewildered but composes herself with the assurance of a veteran waiter of trains.
The old greybeard sitting in my seat makes these notes, looks out at the tracks under grey sky, goes back to hen-scratching. It's as if I am waiting for this old building to tell me what it knows. And it won't. Oh, there are several photos up around the lobby, related to Rugby and railroading, and they have captions: they show us a younger damsel of a depot; they show me a rotary snowplow digging a train out after a blizzard; they show me a group photo of the volunteers who restored the depot.
Half an hour before the train is expected, a young man makes an appearance - black hair, a black goatee, black jacket. He walks in, looks around, walks back out. I don't see him walk away, however, so I'm assuming he has walked towards the west end of the platform to wait for the train outside. I'm sitting inside, very warm, waiting for a train, too, but actually waiting for nothing. I came here without expectation, to see what might be revealed; and I might find that the universe is not sending me a message this morning, that there is nothing happening, that this is just a train station holding on in a small town on the northern plains, and either there is no story to tell or the story is so common it doesn't need telling. I sit here anyway and continue to watch, continue to wait. If there is a story here, and I'm meant to tell it, I have to be here to see it unfold. Ninety-nine percent of the time as you wait and watch and hope, nothing happens. Sometimes the story is that there's no story, just the dull drab light on a grey day, the refrigeration unit on the soda machine kicking back in and filling the place with noise. The young woman waiting for the train uses the ladies room. Heat rolls out of the modern radiators along the walls and I am plenty warm. The world holds its breath. She comes out of the bathroom, that young woman, puts on her yellow and blue jacket, looks at the clock. This day is just like any day. It's twenty minutes yet til the train is expected.
To be continued....
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