TheAccording to Trask himself, the commas in your exampleexamples are bracketing commasbracketing commas used to set offseparate the bolded interruptions. Bracketing commas can come in pairsappear as a pair to enclose an interruption in the middle of sentences or by themselvesa sentence. They can also appear alone to separate an interruption at the start or end of sentencesa sentence. They serve to add more information to complete sentences that are complete.
After two hours, the train came to the station.
Before I could talk to her, she was gone.