The Saturday before Thanksgiving every year, just in the St. Nick of time, the Santa Train begins its 110-mile trek down from Pikeville, Ky., to Kingsport in upper East Tennessee, passing out 15 tons of gifts, toys, clothes and candy and much more in goodwill, holiday cheer and smiles along the tracks.

The Appalachian tradition, co-sponsored by the Kingsport Area Chamber of Commerce and CSX Transportation, chugs out by dawn's early light. Two locomotives pull 11 cars along the route as Santa works from his "sleigh," the last car, the West Virginia.

Santa's helpers are chamber of commerce members and CSX employees, country music singer Patty Loveless and members of the media, along to document a journey that would wipe the scowl off of any modern-day Scrooge.

The train goes through 29 towns and communities along the way, making stops lasting from three to 10 minutes in Elkhorn, Ky.; Fremont, Dante Station, St. Paul, Dungannon, Speers Ferry and Waycross, Va.; and finally halts at Kingsport, where it greets a crowd of hundreds just before the local Christmas parade.

Even before departure, parents and youngsters are gathering. They tote empty plastic bags in which to stash goodies from the man of the day. The "Ho! Ho! Hos!" come flying off of Santa's lips as the toys and candy fly through the air.

Filling the big boots of the man from the North Pole is Frank Brogden, back for his 17th year as the jolly ole gift giver. He's only the third man to portray the Santa Train Santa and he loves the role.

"It's very demanding physically on back of the train all day long," he says, "but when I was asked if I would like to do it, I deliberated long and hard, maybe two seconds."

Brogden relates the history of how it all began in 1943 as the merchants of Kingsport wanted a way to say thanks to their customers along the route of the Clinchfield Railroad. "Today, it's become the tradition of the train and it seems to grow and grow," he says. "And I'm a sentimentalist. The idea of Santa is giving and sharing."

The train takes off along the ribbon of steel and slowly winds through the valleys, past the coalfields and logyards, around the mountains and alongside rivers and creeks. Traveling between 10 and 30 miles an hour, the train comes upon people waiting at different stretches along the run. The folks are watching and waiting and wave as the train passes, knowing that gifts will be strewn between the tracks. There is no way to count how many people see the Santa Train Special, but a good guess is more than 20,000.

Click On Photo To Hear Patty Talk About Her Experiences

First stop is Elkhorn City, Va., where 200 folks greet Santa as he stands on the back platform with Loveless, cameramen and helpers, and the goodies go flying, zippity-doo-dah.

Meanwhile, an earth angel is working the outskirts of the crowd, where mothers and fathers, infants and octogenarians watch the action. For about four minutes the toys and candies keep coming to the shouts of glee.

Regina Smith, "the angel of the Santa Train," is back for her seventh ride. The CSX employee out of Jacksonville, Fla., collects toys all year long. Unlike Santa, Smith gets off the train at each stop, where she searches the crowds for kids that "probably wouldn't make it close enough for a gift."

"I always go to the underdog," Smith says. "You see a kid and it clicks. I got something for that kid."

Smith first boarded the train by "accident" when she replaced a friend who couldn't go at the last minute.

"I started sneaking off candy," she says like a child who's been naughty, not nice. "Then they began allowing me to get off and get stuff out. Now I've worked up to stuffed animals," she says, showing off a 3-foot Tigger doll and a multicolored stuffed bumblebee, toys that will soon find a child.

This Yuletide trip she totes an extra-special gift, her 24-year-old daughter Alison -- "my angel in training," says the angel of the Santa Train.

At one stop 74-year-old Margie Slush observes the train of joy for the first time with her 30-something daughter Lethia Phipps and two young grandsons. "I think it's a nice thing to do for the kids," the Clintwood, Va., native says.

Fourteen-year-old Jesse Crossen of Coeburn, Va., says he's back for a third year, trying to get a toy for his 3-year-old niece. "Anything -- last year I got a stuffed animal," he says.

Alma Moody remembers the "treats" she and her 10 siblings got from the Santa Train back in the 1940s. Now she comes to see it with her grandchildren and to rekindle the memories.

For country singer Loveless, who went to elementary school in Elkhorn City, there were no memories till she decided to make her own. She never knew of the Yule train as a kid but heard about it on the radio last year when Travis Tritt was the special guest.

"Honey," she told her husband, "I want to do that. I wanna ride on the Santa Train." Today, she gives her pitching arm a real workout. "I'm getting better at throwing things," she says halfway through the trip.

The train rolls on past rusty hulks of old cars, gray barns, aging mansions, trailers, new brick houses and brown jungles of kudzu. Those along the tracks bear signs and throw kisses toward the train. The kids hop up and down and shout, "Here it comes!"

Santa and his staff do not disappoint. They rain toys and candies down upon the tracks.

Maxie Kasen, 64, who lives in Carbo, Va., remembers when her father used to bring her and her siblings to spy the train "just before daylight." "We got pencils, papers, tablets and whistles and peppermint sticks," she recalls. "I've brought my kids and grandkids. It's been a joy, a real joy. So nice, it just gets the Christmas spirit started."

An honored rider this year is 95-year-old Charlotte Nickels, who boarded at Dungannon, Va., where she was holding a computer-generated sign that read: 57 years at the Santa Train. "I been to the Santa Train 57 times," she says.

The retired schoolteacher has never missed a year. It was back in 1943 that she had her first-graders write letters to Santa, which she promised she would deliver to the Santa Train. About three weeks later, a check came in the mail to the class, and Nickels was sold on the train and its spirit of giving.

"After I retired in 1970, I kept coming for the fun of it," she says. And yesterday, for the first time, she found herself riding the Santa Train Special.

"This is the greatest shock. They overpowered me and put me on the train," Nickels says.

In the meantime, the Santa Train Special gets closer to the end of another holiday run. At one of the last stops is 14-year-old Timmy Wolford of Jasper, Va.

"I like it a lot," he says. "I like to see people get stuff, especially little babies."

Katie Buchanan, 6, of Kingsport, clutches a porcelain doll she received and is near speechless. "I like the Santa Train and candy," she manages to sputter.

And Dustin Faulkner, 10, of Whittaker, Va., seems to be able to put a wrap on it for all the thousands of children who have heard the whistle of the Santa Train over a half century and been kissed by the goodwill of those who keep the Santa Train on the right track. Just one word, he says with a grin: "Toys!"