As my regular readers know, I am crazy about trains. My neighbor and I dork out over any train that passes by, and we go running toward the tracks whenever we hear a whistle in the distance. For some reason in the last couple of months we would hear a train whistle that sounded like it was coming from the marsh, which didn't seem to make any sense - how could there be a train in the marsh?? But then I looked on Google Maps, and there is a train track that runs along the eastern side of the marsh, but it doesn't meet up with the track we can see until well south of here, so when we heard a train on that track, we wouldn't ever see it. I said that it was strange that we hadn't realized there was another track until recently, but my neighbor pointed out that we only started hearing that train once the leaves had fallen from the trees; when there was foliage, it blocked the sound. That makes sense!
My neighbor broke her foot last week and can't walk with me for at least a month, so Travalon has been walking with me more. On Saturday in Portage, we heard a train, and then we saw it, and it was a passenger train! We only see freight trains by our house, and those don't interest Travalon. Today he even walked with me before work, but of course he left for work before my afternoon walk, and I was poky getting out the door because my neighbor wasn't waiting for me. I meant to walk at three, but it was a few minutes later, and then when I walked out the door, I heard the train whistle! And it was close, so it was on the track we could see!! I ran to where I could see it, but then I heard the whistle a bit further to the west, so I had just missed seeing the train. And that's on me, because if I'd gone out at three like I'd planned, I would have had a perfect view of it. Of course the train never comes at a regular time, and it seems to be coming by less frequently these days, so seeing it is a special treat. At least for me, since Travalon doesn't care and my equally train-crazy neighbor is holed up with her broken foot.
Famous Hat
1 comment:
I actually like passenger trains a lot, although with the exception of Amtrak they seem to be a long gone thing of the past and I'm a railroad history buff- I love steam locomotives, etc. but just for some reason modern day freight trains don't do much for me.They're a real nuisance when they go through busy areas of Madison at rush hour. I'm also intrigued by the historic rout of the Chicago and Northwestern 400, which transported passengers from Chicago to Minneapolis in 400 minutes from the 1940's until the late 1960's. It went over the bridge across Lake Wisconsin by the Merrimac ferry, and right next to Devil's Lake. A connector train on it's route was called The Viking which ran right by the Lakeside Street Coffee House( back then a general store) and across the trestle bridge over Brittingham Bay.
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