Trains.

The shrill of the whistle made me stop and listen. A train was passing through town it happens about this time every night. The sound of the whistle told me the train was coming in from the south and heading north for Kansas City. I always take my dog clover for a walk between ten and eleven in the evenings. That's when the trains start passing throught town. You can always tell in what direction the train was coming from or heading for. I live on the Kansas river in what is called the Kaw valley. The trains follow the river and you can hear them for miles.

From the first sound of the whistle you could follow the train on it's way through town, as the train would blow it's whistle as it neard a crossing and the sound of the train cars on the tracks never seem to stop. The sound of the cars was a rumbling sound and would just keeps going long after the train was out of town. The trains that come through in the late evening were a mile long. The trains came into town from all four points of the compass. There are two trains I listen to the most the first one comes in from the south and heads north, although it's not really north after it leaves town it follows the river and after about a mile it make a wide turn and heads east and heads for Kansas City. The second come in from the east. After it passes the town of Tecumseh Kansas it starts blowing it's whistle. This train whistle is blown longer then the other trains. In the quiet of the night the sound of the whistle ( Horn ) is a lonely sound.

As a young boy I lived in another part of town. In the summer I would visit my grandmother on the other side of town and at nights I would lay next to the open window and listen to the trains passing through town. Threre were many nights that I would fall a sleep to the rumbling of the train cars. Now older I'm living on the other side of town and at night when the air is not on and the windows are open I still fall to sleep to the sound of the rumbling of the train cars.

Have you heard the saying “ To much of a good thing is not always good.”. Case in point. My first home was on what was called the Railroad road it was next to the rail road tracks and there was a bend in the east end of the train yard. All most every night a train would round that ben and it's light would shine through the bed room window. If you were to raise up and look out the window you would be looking right into it's light. Now being less the a hundred feet from the tracks and with the light and the sound of the train you got the feeling that the train was coming into the bed room. It was a feeling I never got over while I was living there.