On a cold morning last week, Jessica Seger, 20, sat inside the toasty warm waiting room at Madison County Transit's Granite City Station, waiting to catch her bus.

Seger, of Fairmont City, rides the bus every weekday to the Sam Wolf Granite City Campus of Southwestern Illinois; she has to transfer buses at the station.

Usually, she doesn't talk to anybody. Instead, she said shortly after 8 a.m. on Feb. 10, she "just listens to my iPod, waits for the bus."

If Seger did talk with others, she'd come across a variety of characters from all walks of life.

Eric Smith, 24, a homeless man who spent the chilly night before on a concrete slab in Madison, was another person at the station. He paid for the bus trip with money someone had given him.

Smith likes to come to the station.

"I sit on a bench and smoke cigarettes," said Smith, standing outside the waiting room. Sometimes he goes to the Jesus Place Mission nearby at 1900 State St.

Sleeping outside in the cold is no fun, said Smith, who's been homeless for three years.

"You get electric pulses up and down your body. You have kind of borderline hypothermia," said Smith, who wore two coats and a hood. "It's lonely, miserable. You really don't get much sleep."

Smith stood close to dark green poles that matched a green on the trim inside the shelter, which also matches the trim on the MCT buses that stop at the station.

The brick interior and exterior at the station looks as new as when it opened in 1993. A plaque inside the waiting room notes that it was built on the site of the historic Washington Theater.

At a stop in the station, Jared White, 19, prepared to board a bus to SWIC, He had on pink ear buds, a blue jacket and green backpack.

The Granite City resident said he could stay warm inside the shelter. But, he said, "I just prefer to wait for the bus out here."

Then he walked to his bus and soon was gone.