05/21/2024
In 2018, we took George for a ride on the Sandy River Railroad. Or what's left of it, anyway.
I'm a little bit of a train nerd and would love to see more commuter rail options in the US, but I know it's probably not something we'll achieve any time soon. A really good bus system is more realistic because it can use existing infrastructure.
Either way, this was George's first experience with trains (he was almost three years old). He thought it was really cool and we have since been on several other types of trains including Amtrak's Downeaster, the Boston subway, Metro North, the NYC subway, and the Polar Express in Portland.
While there isn't much left of the Sandy River Railroad, it was cool to see this little piece of it preserved and still operational, even if just on a novelty level. Probably the most interesting thing about trains to me is the way they can be scaled down to preserve the proportions of full size trains, or in a modified way to accommodate different wheel sizes and track spacing.
Fun fact: my family had a weird train hobby when I was growing up. My dad used his welding shop to fabricate 7-1/2" scale trains and we would all have to load up into the backseat of his truck, towing a massive trailer filled with trains and passenger cars for towing people, to go to "train meets" at various clubs in MA, NY, PA, Montreal, and once or twice all the way down to North Carolina and Florida. All of our trains were electric save for one diesel engine, but a lot of the really devoted people had scale steam engines. I would have been way more into it if we had had a steam engine.
