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The older I get, the more I have come to appreciate the phrase “boys and their toys.”
It is an allusion — not always flattering — to men’s affinity for things mechanical or on wheels.
I never really inhabited that territory.
Cars? Meh.
Boats? Nah.
But short line railroads? Now you’re talking!
I can recall as a kid going to Old McDonald’s Farm in Connecticut and Catskill Game Farm in New York and riding their mini railroads and being enchanted. Or bringing my sons to the Bergen County Zoo in New Jersey and riding the rail it has there.
And as an adult, I’ve enjoyed the trips along the Delaware & Ulster Railroad and the Adirondack Scenic Railroad in New York.
I was captivated to see in The New York Times a story last year headlined “Riding the Rails in the Bronx.”
The story explored a group that wants to put small open-air cars on tracks that are abandoned or seldom used.
When I posted a link to the story on Facebook, I called out to my friends and suggested we should do this. It was met with immediate enthusiasm.
Why?
Boys and their toys.
I mean, c’mon, the idea of riding in one of these old work cars, called a speeder, along the open rails of the Bronx?!
Suh-weeeet!
We could outfit it with a couch, a boom box to play ’80s tunes and a wet bar! It would be a man cave on rails!
Before you ask “Does your train of thought have a caboose?” let me tell you why such personalized rail cars like these excite me: Because they do exist and I’ve ridden one!
I have cousins in Germany who live in Langeness, one of 10 halligs in the world. A hallig is an island without dikes that floods almost completely.
When the floods come, these hills become islands. The roads are impassable and they have to wait for the waters to recede.
One hundred year-round residents populate Langeness, which is made up of 18 big hills where the homes and farm buildings are perched.
You can take a ferry to reach the hallig but the most fascinating form of transit is a motorized rail car called a lorrie.
Think of a lorrie as a shed with bench seats that can seat six and that you put on railroad tracks.
The tracks, which are three miles long, cross land and sea. Each inhabitant on the hallig has their own lorrie.
On the line, there are no radios, no track signals and no control tower. It all runs on neighborly courtesy.
For a kid who grew up on the No. 6 Lexington Avenue subway line, riding the lorrie was an immense treat.
It reminds me very much of what these rail enthusiasts hope to achieve in the Bronx. To which all I can say is: Good luck to them and all aboard!
