When I Think Of Trains

When I was quite young (I was probably about four years old), every morning I would wake to the sound of a train that would go by in the distance just at dawn. I didn't know what that noise was. In my child's mind, since it happened every morning just before the sun came up, I thought it must be the sound of the sun coming up. Eventually, of course, I discovered that I was mistaken. To this day, though, if I hear the sound of a train rumbling in the distance, for a moment, I am back in my childhood bed and hearing the sound of the sunrise.

My Grandmother lived in the very small town of Ashley, Ohio. She lived right next to the train tracks. Often, when we went to visit her, a train would go roaring by. If we were inside, it seemed like the whole house vibrated. All conversation would come to a standstill because we couldn't hear each other over the noise of the train. If we were outside, all of us kids would run to the edge of the yard to watch the train go by. We would count the number of cars as they passed. (Yes, I know, I had an exciting childhood!)

Sometimes the engineer would wave at us.

Sometimes, there was a man standing looking out from the end of the caboose who would wave at us too.

When my family went someplace in the car, we often would get caught by a train and have to sit and wait for it to pass the crossing. Every single time we waited for a train, my Dad would recite this little poem, "Peanut sat on a railroad track, Its heart was all aflutter, Along came a train down the railroad track. Toot, Toot, peanut butter!" So when I think of trains, I think of my Dad, and I think of peanut butter.

I remember thinking as a kid that it would be a great adventure to hide in an open box car and hitch a ride to who knows where on a train. I never did that, of course.

I think part of the reason I was fascinated by boxcars was because I read the book, The Boxcar Children, by Gertrude Chandler Warner over and over again as a little girl.

This was another book very familiar to me in my childhood.

My sons liked the Thomas the Tank Engine books and Polar Express when they were small.

A short while back, they made a movie out of this book with the voice of Tom Hanks as one of the characters.

There are lots of movies about trains. The first one that comes to my mind is "Throw Momma From The Train."
It starred Billy Crystal, Danny Devito, and Anne Ramsey. Perhaps, because it is a movie about writers, it is one I particularly liked.
I can't forget Anne Ramsey hollering in her raucous voice, "Owen! Owen!"
My favorite line of hers is, "The night was sultry."

This is a picture of my sons riding the train at the zoo in Fort Wayne, Indiana. Obviously, this was taken several years ago as my boys are now ages 13 and 18. They are older now but are still just as ornery as they look in this picture.

I've never ridden on a real passenger train to go on a trip anywhere, unless you count the rapid transit trains to get from one part of the city to another in Cleveland and in Washington, D.C. (which I don't count, but I have ridden on).

Riding on this one gave me motion sickness.

Folsom Prison Blues, one of many train songs

WHAT! OH NO! Cover the children's ears!! {=O

hmm.....must have been when the cars were coupled together woooo! woooo! ;-)

(uh-oh, Daisy's corrupting the kids again!)

Shortly before John Denver died in a plane crash, he made this CD collection of train songs. Yes, I own it. Yes, I like his music, and if you have some sort of snarky comment to make about the fact that I like his music, I don't want to hear it!! :)

I played this CD the other day when my younger son was home, and it nearly killed the lad, he was tortured so much by it (or so you would assume from the complaints that he made!). Of course, that just made me want to turn the volume up. (It goes to 11, you know).

The youtube is of John Denver singing "City of New Orleans," which is one of the songs on the CD.

When my husband and I were first married, we lived in an apartment in Bowling Green, Ohio. He was working as an intern school psychologist for the Bowling Green City Schools, and I was working at the Wood County Public Library.

I wore "several hats" at the library. Part of the time I was a reference librarian at the reference desk, part of the time, I worked in the processing department cataloging books, and part of the time, I was the bookmobile librarian. As the bookmobile librarian, I was in charge of the bookmobile which travelled around to various remote parts of the county to make it easier for the people who lived there to have access to library service.

One of the towns we visited on the bookmobile route was a town called Walbridge which has railroad tracks all around it. It seemed to be impossible to make that stop without waiting on a train. Luckily for us, the bookmobile driver and myself, (Yes, he had the job of "Driving Miss Daisy." I'll say it before you have the chance--HA!) there was a little Mom and Pop ice cream stand just to the side of the road a little ways before the railroad crossing. During the warmer months, as we approached the crossing, if there was a train there that we were going to have to wait for, we would stop at that little ice cream stand and get some sort of frozen concoction. The bookmobile driver was fond of their milkshakes and hot fudge sundaes. I liked their rootbeer floats.

The little stand would close when the weather started getting cold. That's where the frozen toes come in. Instead of stopping for ice cream in the winter months, we had no alternative but to just sit and wait in the bookmobile for the train to get past the crossing. The bookmobile at that time was very old and the heating system was much less than satisfactory. Basically, it was a big tin box that felt like a refrigerator on wheels during the winter months even with the heat on full blast. There were many winter days after being out on the bookmobile that I would go home with numb toes and feeling chilled to the bone. The library bought a new bookmobile the year I quit working there, naturally.

This looks very similar to the bookmobile we had, except that I think ours was green and white.

No, I'm NOT in this picture. This picture was taken in 1953 (six years before I was born), but the inside of the bookmobile that I worked on in 1985-1986 looked very similar to this.

Believe it or not, our little town has an Amtrak station where we can catch the train to Chicago in one direction or to Cleveland and New York in the other. I have never ridden on it, but my husband has taken it to Chicago a few times for business trips. It is at the north edge of our town, so I drove up there to take a few pictures of it for this list.

There's not much to it. The Fisher King wouldn't see very many dancers here I'm afraid.

The doors were locked, so I tried to take a picture through the glass. Not much to see--- some chairs and benches to sit on, a Pepsi machine, pamphlets and schedules on the wall, and a trash can. No ticket office here, you have to order your tickets online. No restrooms or water fountain either.

This building is just across the tracks from the Amtrak station. I assume it must be the original train station. Some of the windows are boarded up, some of them are broken.

This marker is by the parking lot at the train station. There was a huge pile of snow keeping me from getting a closer shot with the camera.

From the best that I can see, this is what the marker says,
"In 1966 the New York Central Railroad Company proposed a test of existing rail passenger equipment to determine the feasibility of operating high speed passenger service between cities up to 300 miles apart. The site chosen for this test was near Bryan, OH, as the longest multiple track straight railraod track in the world. This 67 mile straight trackage from Toledo, OH to Butler, IN was originally constructed by the Northern Indiana Railroad Company Incorporated _______.(There's a date here that I can't decipher). On July 23, 1966 the New York Technical Research department ran their _______ (another part I can't read) passenger car number ___ fully instrumented for stress analysis and propelled by two roof-mounted jet aircraft engines. The speed of 163.45 (not sure of the numbers, they are really hard to read) miles per hour was attained, the highest recorded on a railroad in North America at that time and to this day."

Well, what do you know. I didn't even know that sign was there till I went to take pictures of the station. Learn something new every day.

Finally, something that comes to mind when I think of trains is the theme song from the original George of the Jungle cartoon, because, at the end of it, is the short clip of two trains crashing head-on into one another. I don't think this is the same clip, but you get the idea.