I think I’ll give up blogging and play with model trains instead. Yesterday’s train ride got me reminiscing.
It goes back to sixth grade. Late in that school year my family moved from Fenton, Michigan, to Durand, Michigan, a distance of about 25 miles. We had already moved schools once that school year, so my folks resisted putting us through that again. But it was a long round-trip to make by car twice a day just to keep a sixth grader and third grader (my sister) in the same school.
So it ended up that an 11-year-old and not quite 9-year-old took the train. Each morning at 7:01 — at least once they held the train a minute or two for us to show up — we would board the Grand Trunk Western commuter train bound for Detroit. In Fenton, we would walk the several blocks from the depot to school. In the afternoon we reversed the trip. (I can remember my sister and I walking across the wooden railroad trestle between St. John’s School and the depot in Fenton. Yikes!)
While all trains are inherently cool, nothing quite has the romance of a steam locomotive and Grand Trunk still had steam engines pulling its passenger trains 50 years ago. It was the best school bus ever.