This was the first Station my late Father worked at as a new Soo Line (Technically Wisconsin Central Ry. at that time, 1944) employee on the Telegraph Extra Board. He was sent here to relieve the Agent for a period of one week.

There was no sleeping room accomodation at Trevor. So, Dad lived in this Depot for the week he was there.

Trevor had a Stock Replenishment site---a place for the Soo to spot carloads of Cattle to be fed and watered before the final (in more ways than one) trip in to Chicago and the stock yard and packing houses there. Soo's trains, 24, & 26, the "hot" trains, all stopped here to set out loaded stock cars to be unloaded, the cattle rested, fed, and reloaded a number of hours later, and pick up Stock Cars of rested cattle.

This view is particularily ironic. It plays a large part in the short tale I'm building up to.

Trevor in 1944 was an "14 Hour Station", open from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. Since there was no Hotel or rooming house to rent to sleep at, when Dad closed the Depot up at 9 p.m., he climbed up on the Telegraph Desk to catch some sleep.

Around about 3 a.m., a Southern Wisconsin thunderstorm (Folks, you REALLY have to experience a Thunderstorm in southern Wisconsin to completely appreciate how fast they brew up, move, how much rain the expel in a short time and how charged with electricty they are to really understand) moved through the region, dumping a torrent of rain and electrical ions as it went.

A Lightening Bolt found the Telegraph Wires leading to the Trevor Depot and followed them in this end and right down through the instruments to the grounding board, where upon it blew out all the Telegraph in the Trevor Depot and blew Dad off the Telegraph Desk and onto the floor!

Dad came to in a haze of blue smoke from the ruination of his connection to the outside world, and was cut-off from the Dispatcher. Dad ended up walking over to a farmhouse with a telephone, after concluding all the instrumentation was cooked and making a long-distance phone call to Stevens Point to inform the Dispatcher what had happened. Turns out Trevor wasn't the only station hit and to lose it's Telegraph, and the Soo dispatched a Line Gang out to re-string the wires from Burlington southwards. They got to Trevor a day before Dad's relief stretch was up.

There was a large sized burn hole on this end of the Depot where the Lightning found it's way in on the Telegraph Wire.

Keith

Note: This photograph of the Trevor Depot was made by Robert M. Hein. The 1959 Pontiac in the picture is his automobile.