The station agents

The Amtrak Crescent hisses to a stop at the Kemper Street Station at 10:12 on a recent Saturday night, six minutes late.

The platform — virtually empty just moments before — comes to life as about 40 passengers, mostly students, disembark the train.

At the center of the action is Garland Harper, Lynchburg’s Amtrak station agent.

Harper hustles to the luggage car and stacks a dozen bags onto a metal cart, seemingly oblivious to the raindrops that dampen his jacket. When the cart is loaded, he delivers the bags to a crowd of expectant passengers.

Meanwhile, the train, en route to New Orleans, heaves a sigh and then rumbles down the track.

Harper, cheeks flushed and brow sweaty, returns to the ticket counter. The next train arrives at 6:07 a.m., nearly eight hours away.

Until then, Harper must wait. With a stack of old National Geographic magazines by his side, delivered to him by a friend cleaning out his basement, he settles into the stillness of the night.

Anybody who has ridden Amtrak to or from Lynchburg in the past two decades has likely encountered Harper or his colleague, station agent Thomas Gilbert. They are the night owls that keep the Kemper Train Station running eight hours a day, 365 days a year.

They have been a consistent presence during major changes at the station, from its gradual decay through the ’80s and ’90s and its total restoration in 2000. They work through holidays and blizzards, and clock in overtime when required, like during the months following Hurricane Katrina when the train coming out of New Orleans would arrive six hours late or more.

Now, with the possibility of a new daily train service between Lynchburg and Washington looming, Harper and Gilbert will likely be there to see that the change goes smoothly.

Both have made a career working for Amtrak. They split the week, working 8-hour shifts from 9:30 p.m. to 6:30 a.m. with a one-hour break. Gilbert works Monday through Friday and Harper works Saturday, Sunday and three weekday shifts in Charlottesville.

Though their paths cross at the station, Harper and Gilbert take different routes outside of work.

Harper has worked at Kemper since 1975. He greets passengers in a Southern accent, and his uniform — a white collared shirt, navy blue vest and slacks and blue tie — is wrinkle free.

His love of trains extends far beyond his job; he has built a life around them.

“I love their size and symmetry. It’s poetry in motion in a way,” he says.

He has been enamored with trains since childhood. As a boy, he spent countless hours watching trains pass through Lynchburg, often capturing the moment in photographs. As a student at the College of William and Mary, his evening ritual, was to watch the train pull through the Williamsburg station at 5:07 p.m.

At 22, Harper met his wife in a pizza parlor near the train station he worked at in West Virginia. A few years later, the couple got married and honeymooned on the train.

When it was time to settle down in Lynchburg, Harper chose his house because it was close to train tracks along the James River. He’s also a longtime member of the Blue Ridge Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society.

Harper believes that people often overlook the beauty of a train chugging through the countryside, across a bridge or along a mountain pass.

“They are part of the landscape that I don’t think too many people pay attention to unless something goes wrong,” Harper says.

Thomas Gilbert, 58, has been working at the Kemper Street Station since 1986. Before that, he worked at the station in Roanoke for 11 years.

He has short white hair and a sturdy frame. Like Harper, he keeps his navy blue uniform clean and wrinkle free. He greets his customers with a disarming smile.

“I like working with people, helping them out,” Gilbert says.

“I like getting people to where they are going.”

Gilbert commutes to Lynchburg from Botetourt County.

Unlike Harper, trains are just part of his job, not an avocation. Off the clock, he likes to tinker with home improvement projects, car repairs and yard work.

Gilbert usually sleeps from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. When his children, now 30 and 31, were in high school, it was difficult to maintain a peaceful slumber. His daughter’s tuba practice was the biggest obstacle.

“It took a long time, but I got used to sleeping during the day.”

Both men have visitors, train station regulars who come say hello and watch the train pass through. On a recent weekday night, Gilbert was shooting the breeze with his friend Dale Rumsmoke who comes by the station three or more times a week to bring him coffee.

On Saturday mornings, the two friends eat breakfast together in the break room.

Rumsmoke is a train aficionado. Though he’s retired, he likes to lend a helping hand at the Kemper Street Station. He helps unload luggage or guide passengers with disabilities.

Working at the Kemper Street Station today is cushy compared to what it was before renovation in 2000.

In its heyday, the Kemper Street Station, a red brick building built in 1912, was a vibrant hub for train travel. But in the mid-20th century, train travel tapered off as people opted for cars for regional travel. As ridership declined, so did the station.

The roof leaked, the window panes were cracked, there were holes in the floor, no air conditioning, no screens on the windows, Gilbert and Harper recall.

“Every week we hauled a little bit more to the dump because it was just falling apart,” Gilbert says.

Harper says the restoration came “just in the nick of time.”

The transition not only restored a historic building, it also boosted morale for the station agents, and their passengers.

“All of a sudden we had a nice place to work. That was a big difference, to listen to happy people rather than to people complaining about the station.” Gilbert says.

Other memories loom large for Gilbert and Harper as well.

During Hurricane Katrina, the station agents would sometimes clock 15-hour or longer shifts when the trains arrived late. Since Gilbert commutes from Botetourt County, he slept in the back room between shifts when he was too tired to return home.

“It got to the point where it wasn’t safe to drive home,” Gilbert says of the lack of sleep caused by the long shifts.

But it was worth it to keep the trains running, he says.

During the blizzard of 1996, Harper was snowed in at Kemper Street for two and a half days. He lived off a loaf of bread, peanut butter and several cans of soup that he brought to work “just in case.”

“I was just thankful the electricity didn’t go out,” Harper says.

Nowadays, Harper looks back at the incident with a laugh. All in a day’s work at the train station.