When I Grow Up
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How many of you reading this can remember having a
toy as a child that you loved so much you wanted to take it to bed with you so you could
play with it even while you were off in dreamland? Once upon a time I saw an old Lionel
advertisement in a catalog that showed a little boy asleep in his bed with a train layout
close by. The train on the track was missing it’s engine because the little boy was
sleeping with it on his pillow, with his hand holding on to it like a teddy bear. I’m
not sure if I ever took any of my trains to bed to sleep with, but I can honestly say I
love trains that much that I can relate to the boy in that picture very well. Note: This picture is me dressed up for Halloween a few years back. I not only had a flashing "RR-Crossing" pin but also a sound-FX keychain. And when someone asked me where my engine was, I whipped out my Thomas the Tank Engine Plush Toy Pillow. "Woo-Woo!"
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When my 4th grade teacher asked
me what I wanted to be when I grew up, I said an engineer. She was thrilled and before I
left to go home she called me up to her desk and told me her son was a engineer who
designed bridges, and wanted to know if I’d like to meet him sometime and maybe he
could show me around his office to see if this was a career I wanted to pursue. But when I
explained, "no an engineer like on a train", she wasn’t as thrilled and
hoped my passion would 
fade away with time. I’ve
36 years old as I write this and for the past 18 years or so I’ve been working in the
field of computers. But I still have trains on the brain, it’s like a cancerous
growth. I’ve often thought about getting into CTC (computer traffic control) at some
rail yard. But since I don’t like to drive (remember I never really liked the HO race
set - probably because the cars would fly off the tracks every couple seconds and what was
the fun it that?) and I would have to either move or travel several hours a day to and
from work.............I don’t know…..........I’ve met people who work for
the railroad and sometimes I still think I’d be a lot happier doing something like
that. I have learned of a couple places that let you ride in the cab of a train engine.
One railroad even teaches a course in steam engine driving. Who knows, I might just have
to do that on one of my next vacations.
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