The Railway Museum

is definitely worth a visit. 

I don't know why we had not been before. I know I suggested it to Brother Cat at one time but he decided on the Aircraft Museum instead. As the Senior Cat also voted for the Aircraft Museum on that long ago I was outvoted.

The Aircraft Museum was nothing like as interesting as the Railway Museum. It was fun! We got to ride on a little train which was fun too.

I like trains. I have liked trains since I was a small kitten. When I was that small the Senior Cat made me a doll's house. It was a very basic replica of the house we were living in at the time.. I loved it - but not as a house.

I promptly turned it into a railway station. I  put it next to the track belonging to my train set. (It was a Hornby set with a green engine run by clockwork given to me by my paternal grandparents. I was very, very careful of it. ) The train went all over the world.

I thought of all this yesterday as we took our friend H... to the museum. She wandered off to look at the things she was interested in. Middle Cat went off for a bit to look at something and I was left to look at the "Man in Blue" - the information booth that once graced the main railway station in the city. There on the outside were the departure signs for all the trains that used to run across the state. I had forgotten how extensive the network once was. It would be wonderful to be able to get on a train and go to some of those places now. All that stopped when car ownership became much more common. Nobody gave any thought to the future and how rail might actually be a useful form of transport.

Then I prowled on further and reached the carriages that once formed part of the old "Tea and Sugar" train that followed the railway line to the western most state of the continent. It served to bring mail, meat, groceries and more to the people living in the tiny settlements along the line. Those tiny settlements were there to keep the line in good condition. Some of them had just a handful of people and they depended on the trains for everything - just as much as the train depended on them. The train even had a carriage which served as a butcher shop. 

I looked into the compartments used by the men who ran the train. They were tiny and must have been almost unbearably hot in summer.  

I put my paws up on the immense wheels of the much smaller train that used to run across the road we lived on in the city. As I did so I remember how the guard used to lean out ringing a bell to get the cars to stop. Catching the train to go into the city was exciting for us. Brother Cat was once allowed to help to ring the bell. I suspect quite a few small boys were allowed to do just that - and that it was in complete contravention of the regulations. The train doesn't go there anymore.

I hope Middle Cat and H... enjoyed themselves. I did. I want to go back and sit in one of the carriages and imagine I am sitting on the floor next to my precious train set and going all over the world.