ABOARD THE SANTA SPECIAL — After rumbling out of Shelby Yard at dawn, the train whistled through the Kentucky countryside to Marrowbone and on to Splashdam, rolled over Copper Creek trestle and through Sandy Ridge tunnel and alongside Pine Mountain — stopping to distribute gifts and smiles amid the hollows and hard times of Appalachia.

At Clinchco, Va., once a company town for the Clinchfield Coal Corp., Brenda Coleman brought her 7-year-old daughter, Cassidy, and forecast a slew of lean Christmases for the region. Married at 16 but now divorced, she has three sons ages 22, 19 and 18, and a grandchild in addition to Cassidy. She has a job as a teacher’s aide but said “a lot of people are out of work.”

The presents from the train will be a big part of Cassidy’s Christmas, Mrs. Coleman said. “She says they’re from Santa and they make her happy and that’s what I want — to make her happy.”

Need has never been a stranger along the winding 110 mile route from Pikeville, Ky., to Kingsport, Tenn., that the Santa Train has traveled for the past 66 years. But in this season when economic woes have beset the whole nation, deprivation and worry have settled in hereabouts like unwelcome holiday guests and these troubles seem stubbornly determined to stay awhile.

The toys and other presents from the train will be “very important” in the Christmas of her extended family of six, said Leasha Kiser, standing beside the tracks at St. Paul, Va., with her 26-year-old daughter, Katherine, who has three children, Jamie, 9, Samantha, 5, and Brandon, three weeks old. Leasha Kiser’s husband is a disabled logger.

“I’m the only one working,” said Mrs. Kiser, who has a job at a home for the aged.

Like many others among the thousands who gathered by the tracks during the 14 stops, she drove to catch the train for a couple of chances to accumulate presents — many of which will be wrapped and end up under Christmas trees. Festive rolls of holiday wrapping paper were also given away.

At Fort Blackmore, Va., Dennis Millhorn, an unemployed iron worker, said he was trying to get some gifts for his “little girl” at the train because it will be a sparse Christmas at home.

“It’s going to be a rough one this year without a job,” he said.

“The gifts they get today may be some of the only gifts some children get,” said Tom Segelhorst, president of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce, which co-sponsors the Santa Train along with CSX Transportation and Food City, a grocery store chain.

Looking out from the train, he said, “you see some of the most beautiful country ./././ and some of the most impoverished people” in America. On this cold, sunny Saturday, bundled up folks stood in snow and listened for the whistle that signaled the approach.

As always, the train made its day-long trip on the weekend before Thanksgiving — a tradition begun by the merchants of Kingsport to thank their customers and to get potential shoppers in an early holiday mood. The operation is nearly year-round now, with contributions beginning to arrive only weeks after Christmas. About 15 tons of donated candy, toys and clothing were distributed this year to thousands of people beside the tracks.

Many of the gifts are hand made by donors from dozens of states, said Jamie Horton, a Food City employee who oversaw the collections this year.

For years, Jayne Lawless of Douglasville, Ga., has sent in Barbie dolls attired in knitted dresses that she makes herself, said Horton. “She is the sweetest little lady and I keep in contact with her throughout the year. I call her my little ‘Doll Lady.’ “

There was concern this year that donations would be down because of the bad economy, said Haskel Bledsoe, a Food City spokesman. “Some businesses couldn’t send” their usual contributions because of their financial losses, he said. “But others stepped in and took their place.”

For the first time this year, only candy and stuffed animals were tossed out by Santa from the caboose, said Tori Kaplan, director of corporate citizenship and events at CSX, which is headquartered in Jacksonville, Fla., and provides the tracks, rail workers and train for the trip. The organizers were worried about hitting children with toys and books thrown from the train so bags of gifts were distributed by volunteers wearing elf hats and reindeer antlers at the stops.

The bags were color-coordinated — purple for girls, blue for boys — and sized for age groups. The system proved to be popular with parents, who could distract their children and take a home bag themselves for stocking stuffers.

At Fremont, Va., Tracy Combs held her nephew, Kain Peakes, while her daughter, Kayla Combs, 8, and Kayla’s young cousin, Aaron Peakes, scrambled for candy and stuffed animals tossed off the back of the train by Santa.

“We have to cut back” on Christmas presents this year, said Mrs. Combs. She and her husband both have jobs at Red Onion State Prison but some of their co-workers have been laid off. Fearful of their own job security, they don’t want to over-extend.

The train’s Santa was Kingsport CPA Don Royston, making his 10th trip in his red suit and white beard made from yak hair. He was helped by country music star Kathy Mattea, who continued a tradition of having a celebrity aboard.

Singers Patty Loveless, Alison Krauss and Naomi Judd are among the celebrities who have made the trip.

“This is my country,” said Mattea, who grew up in West Virginia. Both of her grandfathers were coal miners and her dad worked in a chemical plant, she said.

“To me it’s like there’s this sort of sub-state — Eastern Kentucky, Southwest West Virginia, East Tennessee, and Southwest Virginia. But it’s sort of glued together by a way of life and the terrain and by the coal mining and a whole tradition,” said Mattea. “I feel like I know these people. They could be my cousins. They could be my aunts. They could be my grandparents.”

At some stops, she joined Santa on the caboose to throw out candy and stuffed animals. At others, she would walk into the crowd to hand out bags of toys.

“I’m struck by the look in people’s eyes,” Mattea said. “Some people you can see a real kind of desperate look. Then you desperately want to make sure they walk away with something.”

But the event is also a “great equalizer,” she said. “It doesn’t matter if you have money or you don’t have money. The Santa Train is still the Santa Train. You come. Everybody gathers together. Everybody gets to see Santa. All the kids get Santa bags, and everybody gets to visit. Everybody gets an equal experience. That’s the beautiful thing about it.”

Santa himself marveled at seeing a child beside the track receive a toy and then take it to another child sitting with crutches leaning against his chair.

Royston said he got the coveted position through “the blessing of being in the right place at the right time.”

After working for 25 years inside the train, he said he shared duties with Frank Brogan — another member of the Kingsport Chamber of Commerce who had been Santa for two decades — for three years when Brogan’s knees began to weaken. When Brogan finally retired, Royston took over full time. The job requires a strong arm, legs and bladder.

“I will not leave the back of the train,” said Royston. “I was trained that way.”

Over the years, the Santa Train has become treasured as a tradition for generations of families as much as a means to help the needy.

At Elkhorn City, Ky., Sadie Stacker brought her 8-year-old grandson, Nicky, for a familiar family outing. “I brought his daddy and his aunt and his uncle,” she explained.

James and Melissa Bolling said they brought their two youngest children out of sentiment rather than need this year. They have five kids but the two oldest are in college and the middle one in high school.

“When we first started coming, it was a help when we didn’t have the extra money” for presents, explained Melissa. But “now that two are out of the house,” there is less strain in buying presents.

“I’ve been coming since I was a little girl,” said Retha Gilbert Baird, 53, as she watched with her daughter and granddaughter as the presents were given out at St. Paul, Va. “Years ago, we would get sheets, towels, pillowcases — things that could really help a family. I think there are a lot of families that could use those sorts of things now.”

At Dante, Va., Catherine Pratt sold $1 cups of coffee to raise money for a museum about coal mining and the railroad. Mrs. Pratt said she was 58 years old and had missed “maybe three years” of the Santa Train during her lifetime. Her children are grown and have moved away, she said, but she comes every year to relive the memories.

The contents of the purple and blue gift bags were varied — no two were exactly alike but all were stuffed full of goodies. For example, one purple bag for a small girl contained a hand knitted scarf, coloring books, Cinderella crayons, pink plastic jeweled rings, three pairs of pink socks with different stripes, a Dora the Explorer plate, mittens, Snow White and Mother Goose audio books and assorted candies. A blue bag for a small boy contained two Leap Frog activity placemats that could be wiped clean, a plastic tool belt with hammer, screwdriver and other play tools, a toboggan cap, a Sesame Street CD, paperback story books and candy.

More than 5,000 of these gift bags were given out.

In addition, at every stop, volunteers from the train handed out larger gifts — NFL footballs, rods and reels for young outdoorsmen, soccer balls, Tonka trucks, big dolls, and giant stuffed Tiggers.

When the train rolled, a crew of volunteers pulled bags from plastic bins label with the names of stops: Haysi. Toms Bottom. Dante (which rhymes with “can’t” around here). Dungannon.

The train passed house trailers perched on scant patches of flat land. There were swinging footbridges over the Russell Fork of the Big Sandy River, which parallels the track for long stretches. A woman in a bathrobe waved from her front door. The train sped by Potter Flats, once infamous for its moonshine. A dozen people standing in sub-freezing weather waved at the passing train from in front of the Hanging Rock Fruit and Vegetable Market.

At St. Paul, Va., — where hundreds of people had gathered — Joe Gibson, an unemployed Army veteran, said he can’t find work “even with a military background.”

So it’s hard to find a job to earn money to buy Christmas presents? a stranger asked.

“Ain’t it though,” he replied from the railbed.