I'm the "generous presenter" of "The Train Stops," and I'd like to offer a few words as to why I proposed it.

I don't know if I would say that this episode is my all-time favorite--it's too atypical of the series to be called that--but it's the only one that has ever genuinely moved me. I've felt lots of different emotions while listening to CBSRMT (amusement, tension, occasional boredom), but this is the only one of the 100 or so I've heard that packed an actual emotional wallop. It helps, of course, to be fascinated by trains. Like Mary, I grew up in a time long past the heydey of trains, yet I was always attracted to them. When I was a child I could hear the Southern Pacific freights going by in the distance at night as I was drifting off to sleep. And for my 12th birthday, my mother took me on my first actual train ride, up the California coast.

I agree absolutely with Texas, that a lot of the power here comes from the usually perceptive writing about fathers and daughters, who calls it "such a sad story, from start to finish." Everyone in this tale is tired, lost, used-up, helpless. Dr. Barnes has no idea how to deal with his daughter and appears to have little human contact with anyone else other than the station master (and, one assumes, his own patients). Ben has outlived his time--a station master whose station is gone. And Mary is an 18-year-old girl with no apparent direction or future. The possibility of her going to college or getting a job is never even mentioned; she dismisses the idea of marrying any of the boys in town. The best she can do, it seems, is serve dinner to her father, at least until she meets the mysterious man.

Having heard this episode numerous times, let me say what I think is happening in it.

I believe that the man on the train suggests Opportunity. Like many of Elspeth Eric's characters, Mary is wrapped up in a psychological dilemma, in this case trying to visualize a future beyond the little town she's in. Yet she has no apparent job skills, no obvious passions (other than the 5:16 train), no notable talents. In every way throughout the episode she appears depressed, even despairing. She complains of tiredness, illness; her father calls her "troubled" and "haunted." In short, I believe she's trapped, and doesn't know how to escape. The man (whether a hallucination or an actual manifestation) is her way out...If only she can commit herself to him. At one point he even promises her a ring, the ultimate symbol of his commitment to her. And yet, ultimately, she is unable to ever actually board that train, unable to say yes to the idea of leaving the town forever. Later she tries to make up for her mistake, and stop the train with her own body--but it's too late. The "man," Opportunity, is dying/has died, and now all that's left is another kind of trip out with another man--Death, whom she "marries" with the ring that should have been her ticket to a new life.

The one element I think doesn't quite work here is the mysterious woman, apparently intended to be the dead mother. Here again, as in so many CBSRMTs, I sense a bit of padding going on. She really doesn't add anything, and doesn't affect the situation in any way; still, she's a haunting presence (literally and figuratively), and does enhance the emotion Dr. Barnes feels at the conclusion, left alone, "a very old man," with both his wife and daughter having come to tragically early ends.

I trust you all will let me know if you think my interpretation is completely off-base....

To me, this script is the great culmination of all those unsuccessful psycho-babble scripts Eric foisted on the series. This is the one where, finally, all the elements come together just right to create the kind of lyrical, suggestive, beautiful story she'd been trying to write all along. The production is lovely--Norman Rose couldn't be better as the father, and the mournful music, along with the sound effects (the wind, the train whistle) all add up to an episode that is, to my mind, one of the very best CBSRMTs. I'm glad others seem to like it too.