My story about taking the train has come out a few times in my life.  The most recent times revolve around my twins.  In June of 2004, my now 22 year old son took the train to Chicago for the TSA – Technology Students Association – national convention and competition.  The train, of course, comes no where near Endicott or Binghamton any longer so the students had to be driven to Syracuse but it was still the least expensive way to get the group to Chicago.  Not sure anymore, or even at the time, but the train – which runs along Lake Ontario in NY and then along Lake Erie – had a huge delay but still, arrival in Chicago was in plenty of time.

 

Then, my daughter, prior to having a car at college, wanted to come home.  Her older brother lives in Syracuse now so I tried to convince her to take the train from Niagara Falls to Syracuse and I could get her there.  I never did succeed in getting her to take the train but it was definitely less expensive than the bus and did not take a lot longer than driving would take.

 

Imagine my surprise this morning when the local paper has an article on resurrecting passenger train service in Binghamton.  The article brought back memories of riding one of the two trains mentioned in the article, I am sure it was one of these two trains, as a five year old in 1966.  

 

I grew up in Owego which is a small town about 20 miles west of Binghamton.  Owego was recently voted the coolest small town in the US by readers/visitors to Budget Travel’s web site.  My father’s sister lived in Niagara Falls as her then-husband was attending Niagara University.  We were going to take the train to Niagara Falls to visit.  We waited and boarded the train in Owego.  I remember we had not gone far when I heard a strange clanging noise.  What would that be a five year old would want to know?  I was squirmy in my seat which was probably not a good thing as just then, an inmate being transferred to a prison in the Elmira area was slowly being taken through the general passengers to reach a restroom.

 

The rest of the train ride was unmemorable but that memory, shared with my daughter as I tried to convince her to take the train home from school, probably did not help.