Jefferson Railroad Station (Location Key)

For most of Yoknapatawpha's history, Jefferson's railroad station is the main portal through which the county is connected to the larger world, and it appears as a location in 31 different texts. Go Down, Moses notes that it lies at the bottom of a "long hill" that runs "up from the station" to the Square (363). The Unvanquished depicts the arrival of the first train at it not long after the end of the Civil War, with Colonel John Sartoris - who was largely responsible for constructing the rail line that runs north-south through the middle of the county - driving the engine and "blowing blast after blast" on the whistle (225-26). However, according to The Mansion, "there had not been a passenger train through Jefferson since 1935," and the railroad itself has become "a fading weed-grown branch line knowing no wheels anymore save two local freight trains more or less every day" (446). For both "Two Soldiers" (set in 1940) and The Mansion we assume the "depot" where one takes the bus (89, 199) is in the building that used to be the railroad station.