The first inbound train leaves Downers Grove in the dark, and somebody has to make the walk to it passable. Snow works those hours: plow blade down on the driveway, shovel on the front steps, salt across the ice that formed quietly after midnight. Fairview and Belmont platforms draw neighbors from blocks around, and every one of them needs the car out and the sidewalk bare before the headlights come up the street. The village sits on a slow roll of moraine, so the drifts stack where the wind finds the corner lots, and those get a second pass. By the time the sky goes gray over the BNSF tracks, the driveways are open and the day can start.