I’ve had a fascination with trains since I was a little kid — not to the point of things like memorizing timetables and routes or learning all the different kinds of locomotives, just “ooh, trains!” It may have had something to do with “The Little Engine That Could” or the trolley on Mr. Rogers, maybe the little train that went around the zoo. Anyway, there’s something thrilling about a train and rail travel. I like visiting Europe and being able to really take the train to get around, and I’ve traveled a bit by train on the East Coast, particularly around New York. I once took Amtrak from Denver to Dallas, which involved two overnight rides in a sleeper compartment, which was fun.

One thing I miss about Dallas is the rail system for getting around the metro area. I used to love being able to take the train to get places and bypassing the cars stuck in traffic. Where I live now, the city’s too small to have a rail system. It apparently once had a streetcar system, and you can still tell about where the stops were. Now we just have a bus in the form of a trolley. Our rail service now is Amtrak a few days a week — you can go east to D.C. and then on to New York and west to Chicago — and sightseeing trains. In one embarrassing incident, the sightseeing train had to rescue a stalled Amtrak train. They hitched the Amtrak train to the excursion train and finished the sightseeing route, hauling the Amtrak to the station. I haven’t yet taken the train from here, but if I ever make a trip to D.C. or maybe even New York, I’ll probably go that way.

There’s a railroad museum nearby, and they have a working mid-century steam engine that they occasionally use for the sightseeing excursions. I have found it to be elusive, though. They were supposedly running it when I visited on vacation before moving here, but when I went to the station to see it come in, it turned out that the steam engine was out of service that day. Then last fall they were running special excursions, and it should have come through the railway crossing that’s just a short walk from my house, but it seems they moved the boarding point away from the downtown station sometimes. Every time I walked down there at the right time, that was a day they were boarding elsewhere. If I didn’t bother to walk down there, that was when I’d hear the steam train whistle from my house. I did see it running one day when I was driving on a road that parallels the train tracks.

This summer, they were running steam train excursions from the downtown station for two weekends. They had an open house at the station, so I got to go see the engine up close. Then on Saturday morning I had an event at the church, not long after the morning departure, so I walked over there early to see the train leaving downtown and crossing the bridge over the street that leads out of downtown. I wasn’t the only one there. A whole crowd of rail fans had gathered at the park that used to be the turntable for turning engines around. Since I was dressed for the church event, I didn’t exactly blend in. I was wearing a dress, pastel cardigan, and pearls. The rail fans were all in cargo shorts and t-shirts from the rail museum (apparently this engine has an actual fan club. They were wearing shirts for this train. It was like wearing a Star Wars t-shirt to see a Star Wars movie).

But I finally got a close-up look at the train when it was running. It really was pretty.

This town was a big rail hub back in the day. It was a supply center for the Confederacy during the Civil War, so the Union blew up the tracks and the rail depot, but spared the town, so all the old architecture is surprisingly intact. The current passenger terminal dates from the early 1900s (the old one was destroyed when a train missed a curve and crashed into it) and is now a restaurant. The passenger waiting area is the bar/lounge area, and they’ve kept a lot of the charm. The restaurant part is in the now-enclosed old platform area, right next to the tracks. The current passenger platform is next to it. There’s also a restaurant in the old freight depot, but it doesn’t have the good view of the train tracks.

Even if I don’t get to see the steam engine often, I love when it’s running because I love the sound of the steam whistle, which I can hear from downtown. I think they run it through here every so often to give it a workout, even when they aren’t scheduling excursions.