The train station:  The station was empty but for the figure of a man sitting quietly waiting for the train to come into the station. Amtrak 101 driven by Penelope drake from Arkansas to Oklahoma was coming through a dust bowl while the man on the platform sat quietly guitar in hand, preparing to go cross country. The train service was very sporadic in a rural backwater and the man looking for it was a right scruff who had a slightly threatening ora about him.

The train pulled into the platform a colossus of iron and steel engineering and groups of people filled the station. There were youngsters with fiddles, middle aged businessmen with newspapers under their arms. The station throbbed with activity as the various kiosks did a raging business selling confectionary and magazines. It was rare for the station to be this busy and the station master was busy instructing the valets and the bus boys about handling baggage in time to meet the rush for carriages outside the station.

Travellers passed through this ramshackle station in the middle of the Arkansas plaines. There were tracks running into town. This place was not much a faceless Midwestern town where the population were simple folk who worked the land in order to make a living. Across town were staging posts for the Midwest and in the saloon about one hundred yards from the station it stood as an outpost against crime protected by a county sheriff from the bandits and vega ones of the back country.

In the station stood a clock under which people would meet. It was similar to bigger stations yet it was similar to smaller stations in that it had alcoves and a waiting area . Farmers would come to the station to trade their goods while buskers would come and play to the travelling audience . Many people would arrive at the station with stories to tell as they begin their journeys to the open west in search of a new life. The station is also popular with traveling salesmen who crisscross the country selling their wares. An oaky smell from the wood pe roused through the station. A central crossing point for carriages during the civil war, now at the beginning of the twentieth century the station lived a quieter existence.

It had a staff of two station workers, two valets and three bus boys. A shopkeeper would travel in to man the convenience kiosk when trains were due. All in all the station was a small family home to its workers who took care of it, while chewing tobacco and playing dice during down time. Amtrak ran three express trains a week and five local services. This averaged as quite sometime between trains so plenty of time existed for bus boys to play practical jokes on the valets. Meanwhile the other station workers would chat politics and baseball with the shopkeeper.

This was a description of a Midwestern Station from the start of the twentieth century.