For the longest time as a kid I wondered what a "Union Station" was. The name was on the bus my mother would take me on when we went downtown. Finally, I asked and was told it was "where all the buses go." As in "a union of buses" I guess, but I wasn't old enough to form that thought.
Trains eventually ate into the canal business. It was easier to build a spur to a small town than dig a canal there. And of course trains were faster ... something that was becoming important in America.
The "Limited" didn't stop in Utica, but charged through each night at about 10 p.m. I remember going down to the station with my father to watch it come through on a summer night.
Fast Train
Nothing is like
a train. It has a serious presence, not
unlike a woman with a purpose. It comes
right up to you, stops, breathes on you, seizes you. Some
keep you waiting. Many are hard to
catch, and most are never on time. Some
leave before you notice they’re gone. Others may be going too fast to jump
off. Each is unique and beguiling in her own
way. And it’s not her strengths or
failings you remember. Rather, it is the
way you were captured.
On a summer evening in
upstate New York in 1954, my father brought my older brother and my ten year
old self down to Utica’s Union Station to watch the Twentieth Century Limited thunder
through the city without stopping. Inaugurated in 1902 and running daily until
1967, the Limited carried fathers and brothers and grandmothers and lovers from
New York City to Chicago, and another set back each day, arriving at Grand
Central Terminal in Manhattan well after midnight.
At nine p.m., she exploded
through Utica’s station at full throttle, pounding down the platform at seventy
miles per hour to where we stood. I felt
my father's hand grab on to the back of my shirt collar, an oddly comfortable
feeling. A tornado could not have
wrested me away from his strong grip, so tightly did he hold me safe. When the train burst past us a mere ten feet away,
the enormous sound and the blast of air were magnificent. A lighted blue eye on
the end of the last car quickly sped away from us down the track to wherever
trains go. She had taken my breath away
and won my heart.
Continue at:
http://www.windsweptpress.com/fasttrain.pdf
Master Story List at http://www.windsweptpress.com/stories.htm
Workers get set to install the clock a the top of Union Station.
Cars from the Adirondack Line.