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Basic Train-ing
To the right is the cover of The Big Book of Real Trains, by Elizabeth Cameron and George J. Zaffo, which was one of my favorite books as a tot, and which is one of my few childhood loves that I've actually kept (I rescued it from Mom's house a few years ago, where it was sitting on a shelf). Yes, it's a kids' book, and it's quite dog-eared, but it's nice to have memories of them around. My Dad says I drove him up the wall wanting him to read this book to me every night for weeks on end. I think trains appealed to me in part because they offer the potential to go to new places, but the fact that they run along set track suggests that they must go to interesting places. Plus you just have to get on and sit down; no driving, cursing at other drivers, or whatever. Of course, as a kid I loved fright trains, I think because of the opportunity to put a bunch of cars together for special purposes. It was almost like building with blocks, I guess. Of course, there weren't many fright trains around suburban Boston, and darned few commercial trains for that matter. So it was mostly a theoretical adventure inside my head. (But then, it seems like most of my life is that way!) I also briefly enjoyed watching the series Wild, Wild West on TV because our heroes were based on a train in the old west (plus it had cool theme music). It never won my heart like Star Trek once did, though. When I got old enough to ride the MBTA by myself (I recall my Mom letting me do so as an early teenager), I would sometimes ride to the end of the line (or, for the change of pace, the other end of the line) and explore what was there. Why end the line here? What's so interesting about it? The Riverside end of the Green Line was exciting because it was a big switching yard with many T cars of differing vintages lying around. Plus it had vending machines with some yummy candy. Plus, I'd check all the phones and vending machines for unclaimed change, and often make enough to buy a candy bar. Such thrills! The Lechmere end was a much smaller yard, near downtown Boston, and wasn't so exciting. Though it has the distinguishing feature today of being named for a defunct department store chain; Lechmere went under sometime in the 90s. Every so often I'd see cars being shuttled from the Watertown switching yard (the one-time end of the discontinued 'A' line) to the main tracks, along streetcar tracks that weren't used for anything else. Wasn't that ever a thrill to see! (For an interesting and heavily illustrated book on the history of rail mass transit around Boston, check out Boston in Motion.) I like rail transit because it's easy and simple. I wish there were more of it around here, and that it were faster and more convenient to get to. CalTrain is horribly slow (and the cars are uncomfortable), BART doesn't run near me, and the light rail in the valley is kind of slow and its network is still being built up. Plus, I don't often want to go into San Jose. Well, hopefully it will improve over time. On the plus side, I do really appreciate the light rail lines up in San Francisco, which (in my experience) are fairly convenient and speedy. Sometimes I think of taking the train from San Francisco up to Seattle sometime, or even doing a cross-country rail trip, just for the fun of it. The romance of rail travel has certainly been given a boost in my mind by one of my favorite films, Hitchcock's North by Northwest, too. Someday, I'm sure I'll do one of these. I think it would be nice if railroad travel and shipping came back in a big way, but it involves a huge investment in infrastructure, and of course the auto and oil companies would strongly oppose it (since they dismantled the American rail system in the first place, so that they could make more money). So I have no illusions that it would ever happen. It's nice to dream about, though. An America still criss-crossed with railroad tracks might make a lovely setting for an alternate-world science fiction novel, actually.
 Baseball update: The Angels and their Rally Monkey advance to the World Series, for the first time ever. Meanwhile, the Cardinals learn that you can pay for walking Barry, as the Giants take a 3-1 lead in their series. I may have to reconsider my "Cardinals in 6" prediction. A Giants-Angels World Series would be baseballs first all-Wild-Card World Series, though both were good teams during the season. I guess I'd root for the Giants, though I wouldn't be sad to see the Angels win, either. Both teams have exorcized a lot of imaginary demons this postseason. I think, though, that if the Angels starters can handle Kent and Bonds, that they've got a good chance of winning.
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While driving home from the Gilroy outlet mall today I noticed that the San Jose light rail runs right down the middle of Highway 85 for several miles south of Hwy 87. That made me think that I'd never written about how much I loved trains as a kid.
