Back when the whole family would pack and roll
My cuckoo just sang SEVEN. That’s a polite admission to myself that I did not sleep, all night. And that I will probably regret that bit of self-abuse, as the day progresses. No real reason, but I did use my time well. I have a much clearer view of how long it would take to travel from Sydney to Toronto, by train. And how many major waypoints we would cross, waiting for other trains to join the consist. Please, do not remind me how most of the important trackage is gone, and how those imaginary trains haven’t left the platform in a lifetime. I had fun, and the price of admission to my simulation was fair value.
I should add that I never took a train from CBI to TO. Pre and post causeway confounded. I would have taken the train, because my family was a rail family, sort of. Why, I knew what a “rail liner” was, before I could ride a bicycle. And I may have seen a steam locomotive, once. History, that’s what counts.
This is as good a time as any to add a note. We were a railway family, and over the years we moved more frequently than most of our friends. From province to province. We did not travel by train, but our furniture did. On TV, you may have seen those big moving vans. That was not us. We had a designated free boxcar, provided as a perk by the railroad. We would find that boxcar, load it with all of our stuff, build internal bulkheads because one family needs all the space available. We would then find that boxcar, in the new province, unload our stuff and notify the railroad that we were done. Pretty practical.
