I wonder how many times I cross a set of railroad tracks each day, something we take for granted. The rumble of the diesel engines and the banging of the tightening slack when a train starts to roll carries a long distance, but we think little of it. When I was a young boy steam engines were still in use. My senses became filled with the sights, sounds, and smells that poured from them. Steam whistles shrieked and coal smoke and cinders poured upward from their stacks in dense, smelly clouds each time a train left the station. Sometimes you could see the driver wheels spin and slip as they sought traction on the smooth tracks.
In Sheldon we had occasion to enter the depot whenever an expected piece of freight arrived such as our English Shepherd puppy Dad named Gypsy, a box or two of peeping chicks, or my J.C. Higgins bicycle from Montgomery Ward. The station agent's name was Earl Farnham who dispensed or received freight, sold passenger tickets, fired-up the pot-bellied stove, and kept the ticking Regulator clock wound. The Northern Pacific served the towns on this line from Fargo to Streeter, running one day west, then returning the next.
Enderlin was a Soo Line town and there was always train activity whether it was a switch engine working the yards, or a long freight train struggling against the incline south east of town that was being pushed by a helper engine, or sitting at some rural crossing waiting for a train with "a full head of steam" to pass. The trucking industry had not developed to today's level so the freight train carried most of the commerce plus a lot of passengers. Occasionally you could see a ragged hobo peering through an open car door.
