In a way, I had an epiphany of sorts one night while I was checking on the Decatur Depot before I headed home. For those who do not know what an "epiphany" is, it is a sudden realization of a truth. It allows a situation to be understood from a new and deeper perspective. This is how my epiphany played out.

Every night, before I leave Decatur for my home in Springdale, I stop to check on the Decatur Depot, one of my favorite places in Decatur.

Since becoming the chairman of the Decatur Historical Commission, I and my group of dedicated history buffs oversee the operations of the depot museum. This is why I make the quick stop at the facility almost every night.

I saw the lights on the signal tower, located about 100 feet north of the depot, were a double caution (yellow), which indicates that a train was coming from the south heading back toward Kansas City along the Kansas City Southern Railroad mainline. So I decided to give the train crew a little glimpse from the past by lighting up the inside of the depot. This simple act turned into the start of my sudden realization of a great truth (of sorts).

I was seated on a bench in the main waiting room facing north so I could see the signal light. As I sat there, I began a journey into the past, around the 1950s, I think. There was a man reading a newspaper across from where I was sitting. Another man was asleep on the bench next to mine and a mother and her child were just coming through the waiting room door towards the ticket window.

I could hear the stationmaster typing away on his old L.C. Smith manual typewriter, probably typing out last-minute train orders for the crew that was about to pass through Decatur. After a few minutes, I got up and went outside to the depot platform.

There I could see the platform manager hollering at his crew to get the baggage, freight and mail carts in position and ready to load the train when it stopped.

Some passengers were leaning against the depot wall taking a smoke and watching the activities going on around the depot. Then off in the distance, I heard a train whistle. Suddenly the platform got busy with the passengers leaving the waiting room and lining up on the platform.

I could hear the platform conductor barking orders to his crew and then announcing: "Kansas City Southern Bell Nighthawk with stops in Joplin, Pittsburg, Neosho and Kansas City arriving track number one. Have your tickets ready."

Suddenly the lights of the train rounded the curve to the south and the locomotive came into full view. And in a blink of an eye, the Kansas City Southern freight train, like the passengers and workers, were gone. The vision that was so vivid to me faded away into the past.

Being an aviation and railroad historian, I often wonder what it was like long ago. Every once in a while, something connects and sparks a vision, be it brief, from the past that keeps history alive in all of us. It teaches all of us that, although things in the world can get out of control really fast, it was not always like that and, with a little imagination, it can be a joyous place once again, even for a brief moment in time.

Mike Eckels is a reporter for the Westside Eagle Observer with a special interest in railroad and aviation history. He may be contacted by email at [email protected] Opinions expressed are those of the author.

Print Headline: What it must have been like

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