Choo choo!

 I like trains, almost as much as I like riding rail trails, and yes, I have imagined a few outrigger designs that would allow me, albeit illegally, to literally ride the rails. Trains are cool, and the BBC just taught me 2025 is the 200th anniversary of passenger rail service, so that's a little more impetus for this post I first contemplated last week, which hey, was over a year ago. Happy New Year!

Yesterday, in a brief bit of winter,

I rode an old rail way,

Parallel to current railroad tracks.

On one of the paths in Northampton, which runs alongside the tracks, I noticed a gigantic holiday tree of railroad control lights, and recalled my experience riding a train across the United States in 2015. It was a good trip, and even after three days, I felt less ragged than after a day of air travel, especially since I figured out sleeping on the luggage shelves. Train travel isn't fast, but it is sedate, relaxing, roomy.

I go, where the train lights say stop.

But there was a downside, and I don't even mean returning to learn my partner had simultaneously broken up with me and started a new relationship a few weeks before she told me. Please, be proud of me now for refraining from a massive side story or twelve, but yes, there are some interesting bits there.

No, the down side to rail travel is that passenger trains often are shutted to wait on sidings while freight rail traffic has first dibs to the tracks. When I went to sleep the last night of two, we were very close to on schedule, but when I woke, we were about three hours behind after an extended stop. Hopefully the conductor enjoyed a good nap too.

Now obviously, trains aren't rocket science. Even the really fast ones in Europe are pretty basic, but big, electric power plants. Scheduling doesn't demand a degree in rocket propulsion either, but it does require someone to make a plan, one that accounts for all users, and keeps the trains running on time, without even any need for a facist dictator. To make rail travel even more pleasant and viable, I propose a Federal Administration of Railway Traffic, and yes, my primary reason for this whole post was to share that acronym. Now don't you wish I'd just told stories about my ex instead?