This Train Memory Of Mine is Long Gone

Luigi was my boyhood hero! Fred is a dork!

Photo by Haoli Chen on Unsplash

My earliest recollection of taking a train ride was when my Dad would take me and my brother Jim and sister Fran on the train from my hometown depot in Sidney, NY (photo above) down to the Afton Fair a half hour away. The year would be about 1959. Mom would greet us at the crossings along the way with a baby in her arms and a big wave to the four of us.

My Sidney was a big train town. I remember watching the long D&H railroad trains screech their way though our small downtown. I’d stand at the crossing gates and watch the sparks fly under their steel wheels as my hair would whip around wildly from the seemingly breakneck speed they were going. The loud clicking and clacking, the ear piercing scream of the whistle, the monstrous locomotive. It is an Imax image from my youth that can be called immediately to the fore.

And then, the big finish. The caboose!

We knew it was coming. The little red caboose would finally appear around the bend by the old freight house. It would pass by me, just inches from where I was standing.

An tall, gangly gent was standing at a little wrought iron railing at the rear of the caboose. He was dressed in greasy overalls with a denim trainman cap pulled down around his grizzled face. Over the years I was told his name was Luigi. Our eyes would connect. And then he would wave. Just a slight movement of his gnarled hands. Sometimes he had a pipe in his hand as he waved, creating dancing smoke trails which wafted over the tracks. But a wave it was. And I’d wave back like a fool until he disappeared from sight.

Recently I revisited my old hometown of Sidney. As I approached the Main Street train crossing the bells started dinging and the lights started flashing and the long gates slowly began to descend. My heart raced. Certainly we have all sat in our cars as a train passed in front of us. But when was the last time you were actually standing at the crossing gate as a train roared near you? It hadn’t happened to me in sixty years.

I edged up to the clamorous crossing gate just as close as I could. I heard the screaming of the whistle, out of sight but getting closer. I felt my blood rushing as I stood my ground and gripped the gate. I was going to stand firm and relive my childhood once more.

The train came barreling around the bend at what seemed like a hundred miles an hour. Just as the locomotive passed directly in front of me, the engineer blasted the whistle. It sent me back a good five feet. The cold wind was thrashing through my clothes and hair as the cars whizzed by me.

The flashing lights and bells of the crossing gate, the whistle ringing in my ear, the rocking of the huge freight cars as they raced by me. It was sensory overload. But I stuck it out to the end.

I couldn’t wait to see my old friend. My affectionate apparition from the 1950s. My old pal Luigi and his shiny red caboose.

After what seemed like an hour, I sensed the train was almost finished passing me by. I courageously moved back up and gripped the gates. I could see daylight way down the tracks where the last car was. Here it comes.

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