Preacher Ludlow looked down at the train schedule in his hand, glanced up a the large clock on the railway station wall, and then neatly folded the type written schedule back together and tucked it in his wallet. Preacher shifted his gaze out the window and saw the people on the platform start shifting from foot to foot and pick up their bags and packages.
Pulling into the station precisely at half-past nine in the morning, the train was late again as usual. That the nine-fifteen train would arrive a quarter of an hour late was the norm here. The first train of the day arrived on time at fifteen minutes past eight, but after that each successive train would be about fifteen minutes later. This causes a slow but steady shift of the schedule where the ten fifteen train would arrive at ten forty-five and so on. By the end of the day, entire runs were shaved off the route. Nobody seemed to care much though because the trains still ran throughout the day, there was plenty of room on each one for everyone who cared to ride, and most everyone who took the train out of the little country station knew the actual schedule by heart.