Kids love trains
By adamg - 10/16/08 - 9:14 pm
... So we decided to make our own fanatical YouTube video. We pulled the T map offline and mapped our course last weekend. Then we taped our little public transit party, leaping from line to line, inbound and outbound.
When we began our journey on the Commuter Rail, a mother was on the platform with her twin boys, also 4 (also mad T-Foamers). She said she was just riding into South Station and then turning around and riding back because it's the only way the boys wanted to spend the afternoon. I told her of my plan and about the YouTube videos already out there. She then confessed that she and her boys have spent hours behind the Home Depot in Quincy watching the trains roll by. ...
Comments
Joyriding the T
Ha! I used to pick up my two rabid railfans from preschool in time to make one of the last non-rush runs of the Lowell line. They were serious Thomas the Tank Engine addicts long before it was popular enough to find t-shirts, etc. We would ride from West Medford into Boston, then turn around and come back.
We did this enough that one of the conductors, who seemed to be cultivating a Mr. Conductor look ala Ringo Starr in Shining Time Station, knew the boys by name.
After the school year started and I began taking the train to Lowell twice a week, he saw me, looked around, and asked "Where are [#1Son] and [#2Son]???".
As a kid
My dad's side of the family has long been a part of the B&O/Chessie/CSX rail system and growing up we just loved taking any train ride anywhere whenever we could.
We'd go to an amusement park in North Carolina called Tweetsie Railroad, we'd hop on the MARC trains (Maryland's version of the Commuter Rail), we'd be allowed to watch the Chessie operators drive the engines and blast the horn (shh, don't get anyone fired), we'd ask to sit up front on the Disney monorails every ride, and anything else rail-related.
True confession
As a kid, I spent long hours with my grandfather just watching the elevated go by (in Brooklyn).
I wish...
I wish I had grown up in a place with a metro/commuter rail system. I would have been such a huge metrophile. I remember going to NYC as a kid and being in awe of the subway...
In fact, Dallas (TX), where I grew up, now has a light rail/commuter rail system that is being rapidly expanded. It's a bit late for me though!
Commuter rail doesn't run on Sunday
Every time we went by, my toddler would insist on staying on that platform until he saw the train go by. A forty-five minute wait was nothing to him. We'd just sit up there half the afternoon and chat. One time we were there so long the police came by just to see what was going on.
One of the most difficult struggles with him was explaining that the commuter rail doesn't run on Sunday. That was his first difference between days - the day the commuter rail doesn't run vs. all the other days.
Train kids
All these comments kinda put some perspective on the firing of the T driver who had his kids up front with him.
Sure, it was probably unsafe to some degree, but wow. Obviously the snitch doesn't have kids.