From a Farther Room

Of all the many antique trains we’ve ridden, the Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland is probably #2 on the list. It runs along Casco Bay from the old dockside warehouse district to the remains of a railroad bridge that burned in the 1970s. The engines and cars are collected from narrow gauge railroads around the country, with the core from Massachussetts and Maine, and are in great condition. The tracks are just two feet wide, and the cars are cutely miniaturized; Maine had an extensive network of narrow gauge trains to support the timber industry–it was much easier to get these little trains into the woods for hauling out lumber than would full-sized trains.

Our train rides to date, in order, are:

1. The Conway Scenic Railroad in North Conway, NH: wonderful scenery and big open cars, not to mention a beautiful station and a nifty model train display.
2. Maine Narrow Gauge Railroad in Portland, ME
3. The Excelsior Streetcar Line in Excelsior, MN: a reminder of the days when Excelsior was a summer resort, with a museum dedicated to the old amusement park and a streetcar ferry ride across Lake Minnetonka
4. The Como-Harriet Streetcar Line in Minneapolis, MN: a trolley (we call them “Toby Trains”, after the tram in Thomas the Tank Engine) ride from Lake Harriet to Lake Calhoun; the cars have great reproductions of period advertisements
5. The Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth, MN: the “Day Out with Thomas” ride was a somewhat disappointing, and rather brief, haul along an industrial waterfront. But I suspect this would shoot to the top of the list if we’d taken the North Shore Scenic Railroad up to Two Harbors; that’s on my list for an Autumn excursion.
6. The Minnesota Zephyr “Polar Express” ride, Stillwater, MN: I’m sure that it was because of the “Polar Express” tie-in, which is probably the Zephyr’s money-maker with the tots, but it was a short and uncomfortable ride made worse by the fact that the promised vegetarian lunch was a “misunderstanding”. It’s probably a very nice ride when it’s the full dinner cruise, though I’m in no great rush to spend $71 a seat to find out.

Sadly, none of the trains we’ve taken has been a “steamie”, though all of them feature steam engines in their advertising (sneaky…). I hear there’s a steam engine in Osceola, WI, near one of our favorite camping spots, so that’s another one that might make it to the top of the list. Oh, and next year we’re thinking of the Mount Washington Cog Railway on our visit to Granddad: about as spendy as the Zephyr, but a guaranteed good time.

Yup, I’m about as much of a train geek as my little boys; the apples landed awfully close to the tree…