When I was a kid, my father was a traveling salesman for a local hardware business based in our small central Pennsylvania town. Sometimes, I think to get me out of my poor mother’s hair, dad would take me along with him as he developed a customer base throughout the middle of the state which was largely dependent upon the coal mining industry. We often traveled along what was then the main lines of the Pennsylvania railroad.Getting the coal out of the ground was one thing,getting it to market required a huge network of transportation. 

Trains were everywhere! One of the highlights of my tours with dad was our occasional stop at the Juniata shops in Altoona (home of the famous “Horseshoe Curve”), where thousands of workers built rail cars and engines. We’d join in for lunch at what seemed to me, the biggest building I had ever seen. What a thrill to rub elbows with some of the most skilled workers, at that time, on the planet.  The Juniata shops were created to expand nearby overcrowded railroad facilities. From 1891 to 1946, the shops constructed 4,584 steam and electric locomotives.As a kid, I actually got to ride in the cab of the great PRR “K4” 1361. I was 6 years old! 

In summers, during nearby visits with my grandparents, train whistles sounded often. I frequently camped out on an open air “sleeping porch” where, at all hours of the night, coal trains could be heard rolling through town in the wee hours.Gramma's house was less than a block from the tracks. You could feel the house vibrate as 100 car coal trains rumbled east to delivery. 

Recently, our family treated me, on Father’s Day, to visit Boothbay Railway Village for a train ride and walk around. We sat on a bench at the historic Freeport station awaiting our turn to board an open-air coach for a quick spin around the property accompanied by the memorable smell of coal smoke which I had known so well throughout my youth. Off we go. It was our granddaughter Vera’s first train ride, and she was quite observant. 

We stopped off at the antique auto museum where Vera’s dad and good friend Cosmin from Romania could have spent a week exploring. But we needed to move on and visited the model train set up in an adjacent building. You really should see this display. It is a remarkable, very realistic, layout of model everything, much of which is handmade and local, a work of art. We weren’t inside 10 minutes when the skies opened up and we ran for shelter next to what has become this week’s accompanying photo, a permanent installation of historic box cars, one, as noted, labeled “Wiscasset & Quebec.”That’sa longrun! In fact, I guess the narrow gauge never quite made it to Quebec but became part of the Wiscasset, Waterville & Farmington (WW&F) collection now residing with another area railroad collection at tWW&F Railway Museum in Alna. 

It's not Altoona, but the trains run on time!