"The night express shot, red as a rocket, from out the eastward marsh lands
and wound around the river shore under the long lines of shivering poplars
that sentinelled the meadows, the escaping steam hanging in gray masses
against the pale sky and blotting out the Milky Way. In a moment the red
glare from the headlight streamed up the snow-covered track and glittered on
the wet, black rails"...Not Harry Bedwell, not E.S. Dellinger, not Charles
Dulin, but Willa Cather's description of the arrival of the train bearing the
coffin. From THE SCULPTOR'S FUNERAL 1905
GOING HOME-----BURLINGTON ROUTE
How smoothly the trains run beyond
the Missouri
Even in my sleep I know when I have
crossed the river.
The wheels turn as if they were glad to go;
They run like running water,
Like youth, running away...
They spin bright along the bright rails,
Singing and humming
They run remembering
They run rejoicing
As if they too were going home
>From Miss Cather's last story THE BEST YEARS, She recalls that magical moment
when No. 17, the steampowered OVERLAND LIMITED whistled in.
"The station and the enginehouse were perhaps an eighth of a mile down the
hill, and from far away across the meadows the children could hear the
whistle. Then came the heavy pants of the locomotive in the frosty air.
Then a hissing--then a silence; she was taking water..On Saturdays the
children were allowed to go down to the depot to see Seventeen come in.....
Yes they were grand old warriors, those towering locomotives of other
days....They seemed to mean power, conquest, triumph....They set children's
hearts beating...They were the awakeners of many a dream."
If you go to Red Cloud, even today, you can go and stand where the old depot
Cather knew originally set, (It's been relocated and restored), open the
eyes of your imagination and see (in that imagination) the scene that she saw
in those bygone days.
Here's the line I like best from another of Cather's stories: '"Thirty or
forty years ago...it was enough to say of a man that "HE WAS CONNECTED WITH
THE BURLINGTON"
All of the above quotes taken from RAILROAD MAGAZINE, INFORMATION BOOTH
October 1966
Pete
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