Friday, June 15, 2007

Trains, Trains, Trains: Aren't We Lucky?


Today has been the best day I've had for a long time. I felt good all day, and I've been sickly for the past couple weeks. That alone was great. However, I got a kick out of Carole's blog this morning and while I was reading that, I got a call from Bob at work.

A few weeks ago they were handing out free tickets for a train excursion from a town about 20 miles from here to our town and back. It was a safety train excursion put on by Union Pacific. Our train club had been given tickets to distribute. When Bob told the head hauncho how many tickets he wanted, the guy told him: UP rules, NO children. Bob said then I don't want your tickets.

We all three grumbled about the no children rule then forgot about it. Until this morning. Today was the day of the excursion. One of Bob's co-workers is also in the train club. He told Bob that it was not true that children couldn't ride along, they could. Bob called to tell me he'd be taking the afternoon off and to alter my plans. He was calling everyone in the club to get some extra tickets. We wound up with two tickets and got a third when we arrived at our destination.

Imagine my surprise when the train showed up: It was the Portland Rose. I blogged once that my father was the engineer on the very last run of the Portland Rose out of Laramie. The photo of him and the crew is on this very blog here.

The entire journey lasted two and a half hours. It brought back many memories for me. As a child, dad took me for a train ride from Laramie to Cheyenne. He wasn't as attentive as my mom was, so I ended up playing in the bathroom a lot on that trip. I just had to take a photo of the bathroom, which is a little smaller and not as nice as I had remembered.

Thomas and I called dad from the train and said, "You'll never in a million years guess what we are doing right this very minute." Dad got a kick out of it.

A good day was had by all. Even Bob, who has worked in the train industry his entire life and isn't really into trains, had a good time.

1 comment:

Elisheva Hannah Levin said...

Wow!

What a lucky coincidence!
But you have had a number of those lately, nu?

It looks like you had great fun!