> High!
> 
> Jim Charter wrote:
> 
>> You remember steam locomotives???  I'm gobsmacked!
> 
> 
> Here in (Western) Germany, the last ones were put out of operation in 
> 1977... so I would not be too young to remember regular steam trains, 
> but I hardly can remember any travels by train at all in my childhood 
> days, as my parents both had a driving license and for a family of four, 
> travelling by car was much cheaper than taking any train back then.

I also remember steam trains from my young days, but also not from 
riding them, rather from living near a train station (freight, not 
passengers, however).  Our house was about half a block from the tracks, 
and I remember that it would shake when the trains rolled by.  Of 
course, this got to be so normal it became barely noticeable.  But I 
also remember when we had out-of-town relatives visiting us who had kids 
around my age (pre-teen at the time), trains were a novelty to them and 
they'd run out to the street to be able to see them when they heard or 
felt them.

> Nowadays, I'm a die-hard train traveller (no car and no license - it's 
> my ecological creed!),

Well, I'm still not a train-traveler, and since I've lived virtually my 
whole life in Southern California I can't get along without driving a 
car.  It might not be politically or ecologically correct, but it is a 
reality.  :-)  I got my first license when I was 16, I'm now 72 and NOT 
ready to give up my car.

>                        but I never had the chance to ride on a "museum 
> train"... which would not please me that much, as I'm more into 
> hyper-modern high-speed trains (as you see in my current POV-Ray 
> project), zooming across France in a TGV or doing Japan by Shinkansen, 
> that's me!

One "museum train" I have ridden is in the redwood area of Northern 
California (spent MANY vacations camping in that beautiful area).  This 
is an old redwood logging train that is now strictly a tourist 
attraction.  It's called the Skunk Train -- it got that name in the 
logging days because they said you could smell it long before hearing or 
seeing it coming.  (It's no longer smelly, of course, but they kept that 
historic name.)  Check their website, www.skunktrain.com, to see the 
type of scenic area it goes through.

> See you in Khyberspace!
> 
> Yadgar
> 
> Now playing: Juan Charrasqueado (Mariachi Nacional)

      -=- Larry -=-

Now playing:  Art of the Fugue, The New York Woodwind Quintet

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