I have always had a fascination with trains...

Robert Louis Stevenson shares this love, I suspect.

 

The words of his poetry are forever in my memory...

Faster than fairies, faster than witches,

Bridges and houses, hedges and ditches;
And charging along like troops in a battle
All through the meadows the horses and cattle:
All of the sights of the hill and the plain
Fly as thick as driving rain;
And ever again, in the wink of an eye,
Painted stations whistle by.
Here is a child who clambers and scrambles,
All by himself and gathering brambles;
Here is a tramp who stands and gazes;
And here is the green for stringing the daisies!
Here is a cart runaway in the road
Lumping along with man and load;
And here is a mill, and there is a river:
Each a glimpse and gone forever!

I hear a train whistle and I am transported...

I am magically on that train and traveling somewhere other than where I am.  In fact, I've written about train whistles before on my blog...

 

...and if you're feeling in a train type mood you can click here to read my previous post.

 

On our road trip to Boise, we stopped at a historic train station.

 

As usual, we were entranced by the cabooses on display.

 

Mr. Jenny and I, in fact, tried to get clearance from our city to allow a caboose in our backyard.   Alas, it was not granted but that did little to deter us from our desire to one day have a caboose to call our very own.

 

So when we found out we could actually STAY in one of the cabooses in the museum overnight we jumped at the chance!

 

"There's no electricity," the smiling docent told us.

 

"We don't care!" We replied.

 

"There's no heat!" She continued.

 

"We don't care!" We replied.

 

"There's no bathroom," she concluded hesitantly, "You need to walk across the tracks to the bunkhouse."

 

"We don't care!" We replied.

 

And we cancelled our reservation at our nice, clean, modern, bathroomized hotel room and booked the caboose for our trip home.

 

After a fun visit with kids, grandson and friends in Boise we headed south toward Arizona again.

 

We were excited but a bit nervous about our stay.

 

"There's no electricity!" We said.  "We can manage!"

 

"There's no heat!"  We continued.   "It'll be just fine!"

 

"There's no bathroom!" We concluded.   "We'll not drink anything after 2 pm.   "It'll be great!"

 

We got to the museum.

 

Nobody was there.

 

Mr. Jenny started digging through the truck looking for the after hours phone number and the museum curator walked around the corner.

 

"Hey!" said Mr. Jenny.   "I saw you on TV.   Weren't you on Rick's Restorations with some railroad equipment?"

 

The bearded gentlemen, Mark,  replied, "Yes!" and struck up a lively conversation with us.

 

We talked for quite a while and finally Mark told us that someone would be there with a key to the caboose shortly.

 

He started to walk away and then he turned around.

 

"You know there's no electricity, heat or bathroom in that caboose, don't you?"

 

We both assured him we would be fine.

 

He started to walk away and then he turned around again.

 

"You know it might freeze tonight, right?"

 

Freeze.   Schmeeze.  "We'll be fine!" we told him and we parted ways.

 

A few minutes later a young man showed up with the keys to the caboose and passes for the railyard.

 

"Just sign this release," he told us and then showed us an extra key.

 

"This key is to the bunkhouse.  You can use the bathroom in there and go in there to sleep if you get too cold."

 

We signed the releases.

 

We looked at each other with big eyes.

 

And then we went inside the caboose.

 

I apologize for this method of sharing pictures.  Blogger is being difficult.   I believe you can click on each small picture and enlarge it.

 

To be continued tomorrow.

 

All Aboard!