National Train Day

You may have missed it in all the hoopla over Mother's Day, but Saturday was "National Train Day".

National Train Day is the annual commemoration of the 1869 joining of the Transcontinental Railroad in Promontory Summit, Utah, the day on which the "golden spike" was driven into the final tie that joined 1,776 miles of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railways, uniting the United States by rail.

To tell the truth, I kind of missed it, too. I was too busy at the railroad.

I hadn't planned on working at the railroad this weekend. Saturday was cold and rain-ish, so I couldn't work out on the track side, and I was going to devote Sunday to cleaning up.

But somehow schedules got confused, and the conductor for Saturday and Sunday wasn't coming. I conducted Saturday, with Reed driving, and drove Sunday, which John conducting.

We had John and Judi over for pizza Saturday night as a consolation prize for having to work. The news about Michael's great-nephew, Jackson, got us all into a discussion of babies' names, and we spent more time than was probably warranted thinking up silly names and really silly nicknames.

The upside, though, was that the silliness gave John and Judi's son, who is currently grounded, perhaps for life, a chance to laugh and feel a little less quilt-ridden. He is on the edge of becoming an teenager and practicing hard at it; hence the grounding.

Here's an odd, almost random, fact about National Train Day and the "golden spike": The Sandley company, which the railroad preserves as a living museum, was the premier builder of small-scale steam engines in its day. Sandley was asked if it could make two full-size American 4-4-0 engines for the centennial of the "golden spike" in 1969. The company didn't have the capacity to build two full-size Americans in the 12-month period allotted, so the work went overseas. But wouldn't it have been something if the company had been able to do the work?

The railroad celebrates Mother's Day with "Mom's Ride Free", so we had a lot of families with very excited, wild-as-march-hare kids getting their first train ride of the season.

I'm taking a week off from the railroad. Helen is coming for the week, so I'll ignore my railroad to-do list.

The week won't be entirely devoid of trains, though. Helen is coming on the Empire Builder this afternoon, and I'm planning to take her out on the scooter, so that she can see the railroad through my eyes, if we get a chance.

It is supposed to rain on Wednesday, so we might all head to Madison. The State Historical Society has a well-reviewed exhibit on "Odd Wisconsin" that looks like fun.