The Toy Train

How many of us have an attraction to the coochie cooing train when we were kids? I guess to some extent all. Every little boy (and some girls also) has a collection of toy cars and trains in the kinder days and I was not an exception. I too had my cache of toy cars and amidst them was this toy train which did the job of carrying around the cars and other assortement of toys from one room to other:-) This train was down to earth it had a dummy steam engine with about 3 bogies. It had nothing electronic about it. So I had to push it around while kneeling on the floor and all the time wishing that it somehow worked on remote control. This childhood fantasy never came true, but I did have the fortune to see the spectacle of one man actually using a real life train for real life purposes with remote control as part of his daily work! The train station in the city of my work place has a some manufacturing factory behind it and it requires train to transport its goods to and fro. The factory has its own locomotive shed and a mini railway station. There is this man who doubles up as driver, lineman, shuting man and signal controller all rolled into one. He uses a hand held remote control to shunt wagons and attach or detach them to the engine. He also runs along and changes tracks manually until he gets the sequence of engine and wangons behind it correct. It is such fun to watch this man working that almost every passenger on the railway station enjoys it while waiting for their respective trains. It is my favorite pastime in the mornings. I really wish this stranger of a hard working and lucky man who is living my childhood fantasy all the wishes!