Long time ago, in the days of steam, this little structure, dating still from the time of the line construction in 1860, offered to the rare freezing passengers not only the warm shelter from the chilling winds, blowing unhindered over the land, but also a little office for a station agent, operating the telegraph and selling tickets. Nowadays the agent is gone, the doors of the waiting room are locked, and the only shelter still offered to those waiting for the Fiat RDCs on the local runs - mostly they are students visiting high the schools at Ptuj or Murska Sobota - is the porch in front of the building. Except for the wooden bench and the water-less plump shit-house without the proper drainage, which very few dare to use, there is no other comfort available to the passengers.
I like this place just because of its primeval, rural simplicity. Except for the automatic road crossing gates right next to its east side and the two mercury vapor floodlights, the station doesn't show any sign of the modern times.
However, this fossil, frozen in time and the serene rural atmosphere surrounding it will soon be the history. The line running past it, just a low density secondary main line merely 6 years ago, with only a couple of local freight jobs daily, turned in the frog-to-prince fashion into the vital European corridor, spanning the Spain, France and Italy with the Hungary, Romania, and Ukraine. The magic kiss occurred in the year 2000, when the stretch of the line between Murska Sobota and Zalaegerszeg in the Hungary, abandoned in 1964 because of the total lack of the traffic between Slovenia and this country on the Russian side of the Iron Curtain, has been built again. With both countries already members of the European Union, the political and economic situation has changed totally, and all this has also reflected in the new economic and commercial flows in this corner of the Europe.
In all probability the complete modernization of this line will begin already in the next year. The line will be upgraded for the heaviest axle loads, the old arm signals will be replaced by modern APB and CTC signalization, gone will be the telephone poles, and instead of roaring EMD "Reagans" the new, not at all thrilling multi-system Siemens Taurus motors will silently zip up and down the line. The era of romantic railroading will terminate forever.
Thus, whenever I can I stop here, or at some other station along the line, even if only for the few moments, until the first train passes by, to catch, to smell, and to enjoy this atmosphere while it lasts.
This was the reason that guided me last Saturday to stop again at this place. The extraordinary warm winter day - without snow, with the primroses and snowdrops blossoming on the meadows, and with the temperature near 60F definitely by far not deserving this label - was nearing the end, and the tearing apart weather front was leaving the last sunrays through the low hanging clouds.
According to the timetable the fast regional train RG640 from Ljubljana to Hodos should pass by in less than 10 minutes, so I knew there will be enough light left to catch it, even if I'll have to crank up the sensitivity of my Canon DSLR up to ISO 1,600 to freeze it into at least acceptably sharp picture.
Even if the light was less than perfect I decided to spend the waiting time recording the station and the nearby abandoned farmhouse. It never hurts to have few more shots in the archive; after all it costs nothing. However, it didn't take long before a tiny but bright star appeared on the horizon, right where the miles of the two shiny steel ribbons join at last.
The train, speeding toward me with the maximum allowed speed of 65 mph, was approaching fast. Soon I was hearing the sound of the Reagans two-chime air horn, as the engineer was blowing it for the numerous road crossings, many of them not yet protected with the automatic gates and adorned with the candles and flowers in the memory of those who didn't hear or obey the warnings. The Reagan was growing fast; the roar of its 645-E prime mower was louder any second, and the sense of the train's speed was increasing every second, just as was increasing the thrill in me.
I started to press the shutter; click, click, click... Five times and the train already rumbled past me. Two more clicks for the going-away shots and the train was already sunken in the distance and the evening mist.
It was a brief, but nonetheless thrilling experience. Packing my camera back to the bag I was asking myself - how many times still, before it will be all over. There was no answer to that, only the hope for many, many more.
