One of the best days ever
I didn't even tell Myles about the trains until Friday morning when I was rudely trying to change him while he was trying to go back to sleep. A few nights before there was a program on Great Trains on WQED. One of the featured trains was the Strasburg train. I asked Myles at the time if he would like to ride that train, and he said yes.
So on Friday morning as I am packing up Myles for the 2-hour ride to Lancaster from my sisters' I told him that we were going to ride big steam engines that day, maybe one just like Thomas. I had ordered the tickets to be picked up at the station, but just in case something with my order, or I got lost and missed our timed ticket, I didn't want to definitely tell him we were going to ride Thomas and have me mess it up for him. Anyway, I asked him, would you like to ride a big steam engine, expecting an excited "YEAH!" What I got was a ,"No." Shocked, I asked him again, with all the emphases suitable to my deflated supplication. "No, a big, big DIESEL ENGINE." Oh well, I hoped he would forget about the Diesels (who in the Thomas books and program aren't usually very nice anyway).
As we got closer to the railroad itself, on the road from Lancaster to Strasburg, Myels started to see billboards for trains and specifically Thomas. He was starting to get interested in the whole steam engine thing. I kept talking to get him frenzied for when we got there. Randy called me on the phone and I could barely talk to him because I was so excited. I think I may have hung up on him in the parking lot.
Once in there I could tell Myles was putting the pieces together in his head. We weren't there very long before he actually saw Thomas, and I had to race after him and restrain him from running into the tracks. "Thomas!!!! Thomas!!!!"
We were there early enough that we got to ride a little replica of the steam engine, the size of the train you can ride at the Pittsburgh Zoo. It had a tunnel, which made Myles very happy.
And then it was time to line up for Thomas. In the coaches I told Myles these were just like Annie and Clarabel. They were goregeous coaches. I guess the Thomas event uses the coaches from the local lines. The Strasburg coaches are all old and restored from their line. The newest is from like the 1920s. Plush velvet seats, glowing wood paneling, even a coal stove which we sat near to keep warm. He saw a conductor and asked if that was the fireman. I told him that the fireman was up front, in Thomas. Yes, we are train geeks in training.
I really don't need to tell you how happy Myles was riding Thomas.
Heck, I even let someone take my picture, I was so happy.
After Thomas, after lunch, we rode our third train of the day, the actual Strasburg line. It was a fascinating ride, with the historical commentary give us. The train traveled through Amish country (and as I watched people take pictures out the window of Amish farmers in the fields a certain story about a certain mother-in-law visiting Kentucky's Amish country acme to mind). Myles like this ride, too. We have a book that has a line in it about a "black tender and a black steam engine." We repeated that line several times during our ride.
One of the things I found interesting about the Strasbug ride was the de-coupling and re-coupling of the engine in the middle of the ride. Having ridden Amtrak from Philly to Pittsburgh and been bounced around a little when they switched from the electric engine, I grabbed Myles to hold him. I was not prepared to feel nothing. So smoothly was the recoupling in particular, after they moved the engine to the other end of the ride to return to the station, that if they hadn't told me that they were going to do that I would have never even known. It also helped make some of the Thomas stories make better sense, like when some of the trains (like Gordon) are proud of being able to couple to the trains without banging into the coaches at all, an apparent challenge for the engines accostumed to pulling freight (like Henry) or shunting freight in the yard (like Percy). (Yes, I wrote that in ALL seriousness)
I'll have more pictures up later in the week. I took a digital camera, mostly to capture video, and a film camera, just to be sure. I need to take the film to get developed yet.
So on Friday morning as I am packing up Myles for the 2-hour ride to Lancaster from my sisters' I told him that we were going to ride big steam engines that day, maybe one just like Thomas. I had ordered the tickets to be picked up at the station, but just in case something with my order, or I got lost and missed our timed ticket, I didn't want to definitely tell him we were going to ride Thomas and have me mess it up for him. Anyway, I asked him, would you like to ride a big steam engine, expecting an excited "YEAH!" What I got was a ,"No." Shocked, I asked him again, with all the emphases suitable to my deflated supplication. "No, a big, big DIESEL ENGINE." Oh well, I hoped he would forget about the Diesels (who in the Thomas books and program aren't usually very nice anyway).
As we got closer to the railroad itself, on the road from Lancaster to Strasburg, Myels started to see billboards for trains and specifically Thomas. He was starting to get interested in the whole steam engine thing. I kept talking to get him frenzied for when we got there. Randy called me on the phone and I could barely talk to him because I was so excited. I think I may have hung up on him in the parking lot.
Once in there I could tell Myles was putting the pieces together in his head. We weren't there very long before he actually saw Thomas, and I had to race after him and restrain him from running into the tracks. "Thomas!!!! Thomas!!!!"
We were there early enough that we got to ride a little replica of the steam engine, the size of the train you can ride at the Pittsburgh Zoo. It had a tunnel, which made Myles very happy.
And then it was time to line up for Thomas. In the coaches I told Myles these were just like Annie and Clarabel. They were goregeous coaches. I guess the Thomas event uses the coaches from the local lines. The Strasburg coaches are all old and restored from their line. The newest is from like the 1920s. Plush velvet seats, glowing wood paneling, even a coal stove which we sat near to keep warm. He saw a conductor and asked if that was the fireman. I told him that the fireman was up front, in Thomas. Yes, we are train geeks in training.
I really don't need to tell you how happy Myles was riding Thomas.
Heck, I even let someone take my picture, I was so happy.
After Thomas, after lunch, we rode our third train of the day, the actual Strasburg line. It was a fascinating ride, with the historical commentary give us. The train traveled through Amish country (and as I watched people take pictures out the window of Amish farmers in the fields a certain story about a certain mother-in-law visiting Kentucky's Amish country acme to mind). Myles like this ride, too. We have a book that has a line in it about a "black tender and a black steam engine." We repeated that line several times during our ride.
One of the things I found interesting about the Strasbug ride was the de-coupling and re-coupling of the engine in the middle of the ride. Having ridden Amtrak from Philly to Pittsburgh and been bounced around a little when they switched from the electric engine, I grabbed Myles to hold him. I was not prepared to feel nothing. So smoothly was the recoupling in particular, after they moved the engine to the other end of the ride to return to the station, that if they hadn't told me that they were going to do that I would have never even known. It also helped make some of the Thomas stories make better sense, like when some of the trains (like Gordon) are proud of being able to couple to the trains without banging into the coaches at all, an apparent challenge for the engines accostumed to pulling freight (like Henry) or shunting freight in the yard (like Percy). (Yes, I wrote that in ALL seriousness)
I'll have more pictures up later in the week. I took a digital camera, mostly to capture video, and a film camera, just to be sure. I need to take the film to get developed yet.
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