Painting this train brings back more than a few wonderful and joyful memories about trams, trains and a racehorse.
When I was around thirteen, a tram, somewhat larger than a streetcar traveled from Vancouver to Richmond, which took about an hour. There's just something about a tram rolling along the steel rails, rocking from side to side that's really enjoyable, especially for a boy with adventure on his mind. I only rode the tram a couple of times with my parents and sisters to Lansdowne Park, so my dad could bet the horses. There was a trestle a very short distance from where I lived and just like in my painting, it was very narrow and had a couple of small platforms with a 45 gallon barrel full of water on each one in case of fire. My friends and I had a lot of fun playing around on the trestle, which if we had fallen off could have killed or seriously injured us but kids being kids, we were fearless. We'd even walk the rails and when the tram came, if we didn't have enough time to make it to one of the platforms, we'd hang off the sides of the trestle till it thundered by, which was a little unnerving since it shook.
Traveling by train is a cool experience too and I've been on several trains. I rode the day-liner on Vancouver Island a couple of times and going across a high trestle near the Malahat highway, if you're afraid of heights, is not a good idea to look down and think about crashing on the rocks below. I also took one of my daughters to see her grandfolks on a train from Vancouver to Prince George; the route spectacular. I've also traveled by train a few times from Calgary to Vancouver, the most memorable time was during my honeymoon with my first wife Doreen to meet my folks and sisters. We had our own compartment, which was very cool.
When I worked as a groom at Exhibition Park, a racetrack in Vancouver, which is only a hop, skip and a jump from the railroad tracks and a huge grain elevator, a couple of us young guys would jump into an empty boxcar with a sack and a broom to gather wheat that was lying around on the wooden floor. One day, while we were sweeping grains of wheat into a sack, a locomotive backed into the cars with a jolt that almost knocked us off our feet. Thinking it would be fun to ride it for awhile, we decided to stay, that is until it began going faster and faster. It's more than a little frightening to leap out of a boxcar when it's moving down the tracks, the clickity-clacks becoming more rapid but that's what we did. We didn't hit the dirt with our feet and a roll, our feet were running as fast as they could to keep our balance when we landed.
You might think what's a racehorse got to do with a train? Well this was a special horse that was entered in the Longacres Mile at Emerald Downs near Seattle. Little Choo Choo was his name and since I was the groom, I got to ride with the horse in it's own boxcar, now how special is that? Little Choo Choo didn't win the race but to me, the whole trip was a big time winner. What's not to like about curling up in sweet-smelling straw, watch a horse by the name of Little Choo Choo nibbling hay as the train rumbles along the track? For a young lad, it doesn't get much better than that...cheers, eh!
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