Like many small towns, there are still trains that run through Frowntown. It's been a long time since trains have stopped in Frowntown, though - mostly they just barrel through from somewhere with something still to produce on the way to somewhere that needs products. None of these trains carry passengers, since Frowntown isn't really on the way to anywhere. Years ago, the older generation will tell you, there used to be a train station in Frowntown where they would go to pick up Aunt Glenda or Uncle Troy for a yearly visit. The kind of train station with handmade wooden poles holding up a slightly leaky roof, the kind of train station where you rarely saw anyone asking for change for train fare - and if you did, you bought them a ticket.

Truth is, there used to be a couple stops for the train in Frowntown, though only one had an actual station. While the passenger train was loading and unloading, sorting luggage and checking tickets, the freight trains found enough money to be made in Frowntown to sit and rest for a bit. This is, of course, before shipping containers and oil tankers stretched for miles beneath the overpasses of Frowntown. Sam Townshend's grandfather had built a loading dock right at the back of his factory, from which he would supervise the loading of finished products - doorknobs, hinges, all sorts of locks (and of course shell casings of all sizes during the wars) - and the unloading of coal and any fancy new tools he had bought from that well dressed salesman from the city.

Nowadays, the city doesn't seem that far away: in fact, you could mean any one of five or six cities, and you could make a day trip out of any of them. This was the main reason the trains just rumbled right on past Frowntown now: it was more "cost effective" to skip all these little towns and only deliver to a main loading dock. Each shop owner would have to figure out how to transport their own goods to wherever they needed them - the days of back-of-factory ad hoc train stations were over, unless you could fill at least 3 cars. Even then, you had to be able to fill cars every day, or at least twice a week, before there was any way one of these trains was ever stopping for you.

Trains not stopping when people wanted them to had recently caused a bit of a problem in Frowntown. Facing a distinct lack of evening entertainment options, many Frowntown teenagers decided that drinking down at the freight tracks offered more excitement than sitting at home. It was extremely rare for someone to actually be killed by a train, but it had happened twice in Frowntown in only three years. Both times, there was talk of asking the railroad to put up fences, but everyone knew that would do no good. The police department patrolled along the tracks once or twice a night, but you can see the lights of a police truck for miles along the train tracks, and they never caught anyone from Frowntown - only a few walkers on their way, like the trains, to somewhere else.