On the Right Track

by Lloyd B. Abrams

Until he went off to college, I had to share a bedroom with my brother. The plywood-paneled basement became my sanctuary. When I was deemed old enough, I was allowed to unpack the orange and blue Lionel boxes and "put up the trains" on the ping pong table.

I spent many absorbing hours each Saturday afternoon getting the layout just right. The planning usually started days before in my junior high study hall, and sometimes during classes, when what I was designing was far more important than what was being covered in class. Not only did I teach myself two-dimensional topography and electrical wiring, but I learned, most importantly, to work through a complex project without giving up.

After many hours of solitary work, I'd appear for dinner and invite my parents to see my newest creation. I'd get both trains chugging around their loops and then turn off the basement flourescents. The spot lights from a train tower illuminated the layout, red and green bulbs glowed from the remote switches, and the other accessories - the stations, crossing gates, signals and end bumpers - lit up as well. Though I always hoped for a rave review, all I usually got was a hasty "Hey, that's pretty nice," as they headed back upstairs to watch television.

Once the layout was up, tested, run and shown off, the creative thrill was gone. On Sunday I'd sometimes run the trains, refine the setup, tighten the track connections with a needle-nose pliers, or add extra wiring to the under-powered contacts furthest from the transformer. Often, I'd try to test limits by running the trains as fast as possible and then crash them, but most of the fun was over. By the following morning, I was already planning next Saturday's configuration.

I've always been fascinated with trains, though I don't consider myself a true fanatic. Perhaps it's the sheer power of huge engines that could pull more than a hundred freight cars or could turn a car stalled on a railroad crossing into scrap metal. Or maybe it was, unlike life, the strict determinism and control of the tracks - trains would not veer off unless there was a derailment - something that rarely happened except on my train layout. Other forms of transportation - trucks, buses, boats and airplanes - never appealed to me in the least.

When I was five, my father took me to have my tonsils and adenoids removed. Almost sixty years later, besides the smell of ether and the taste of Breyers ice cream afterwards, I still remember standing in the head car holding my father's hand and watching out the front window as the subway train rocked and clanged along the elevated tracks of the IRT New Lots line. Even as a kid I preferred the subway over slow-moving streetcars and trolleys.

When my mother drove us in from Islip to visit Grandma, who remained in her Crown Heights apartment in Brooklyn, my brother and I sometimes walked through Lincoln Terrace Park to that special place where the subway rose out from the tunnel and curved out into daylight. Perhaps there was a Freudian component to it, but we got a rush out of watching the trains emerging one way and reentering the other.

At home, we often got our Columbia bikes out of the garage to ride to the Long Island Rail Road tracks, where we'd climb up into and explore an empty boxcar parked on a siding whose sliding door was left open. When we heard a locomotive approaching, we'd rush out and put a penny on the track. Retrieving the flattened penny after a train rumbled by was one of our things.

For my first full-time job, I commuted from Islip to Manhattan on drafty, rickety diesel locomotive-drawn cars, disembarking at Hunters Point to transfer to the subway to Grand Central. After we got married, I commuted from Freeport into Brooklyn. I was so excited when the first ultra-luxurious (then!) M-1 train cars pulled into the station. Some years back, we were on a two-car Centovallina line trolley-train on our way to Locarno, Switzerland. At one station, the train operator was being relieved and the key was left in the console. My wife teasingly tried to goad me into driving the train. To this day, she playfully throws in my face, "You had your chance, and it's not my fault that you didn't take advantage of it."

Nowadays, when we return after a night out in Manhattan I still examine the line timetables as my wife gazes out the window. When we drive over the Coney Island subway yard on the Belt Parkway or on Sunrise Highway along the Long Island Rail Road tracks, or over the railroad yard in Sunnyside, Queens she kids me about "Hey, honey! Whose trains are those?" And I answer, "Mine!"

These days, when I'm in New York City and have to take the subway, I hope for one of the older trains because the newer ones have two doors up front and double windows. I still gravitate to the head car of the train, and stand at the window with one hand on the door handle, watching as our subway barrels through its tunnel, as red and yellow signals turn to green, as it switches from one track to another, as the train slows and then stops for passengers.

When we were in Altoona, Pennsylvania we made a trip not only to the Railroaders Museum, but to Horseshoe Curve, where, along with a group of true rail road fanatics, we waited for a freight train to pass by around us. We've been on the Washington Metro, the London Underground, the Montreal Metro, on Swiss Rail and we've taken a cog railway up to the ice station on the Jungfrau. We've been with our daughter in Steamtown, the National Historic Site in Scranton and with both children at the Connecticut Trolley Museum in East Windsor and the New York Transit Museum in Brooklyn.

This past spring, we brought our three-year old grandson to the city on the Long Island Rail Road and tried to answer all of his "Why?" questions. On our way downtown, I held him up at the front window of an older "C" train while both of us laughed with glee. And just this summer, we traveled with our son and his family on the open coach cars of the Strasburg Rail Road steam train from Hershey to Paradise, Pennsylvania.

All these trains, and they're still part of my life! You might as well ask, now, "Whose trains are these?" My answer is, and probably will always be, "They're mine."

Rev 3 / November 9, 2009

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November, 2009…Copyright © 2009, Lloyd B. Abrams