Trains do still come and go

I made this photo last week inside the Danville, Virginia train depot. Amtrak and other trains still pass by daily, and if I wanted to, I could board an Amtrak passenger train here early in the AM and be in New York City in mid-afternoon the same day. I like that possibility, because there are few places outside of large cities in the United States today where one can take a train anywhere, except around a small track in some carnival ride or amusement park.

Perhaps it's the old wooden benches in the Danville depot that bring me back to when I was a child riding trains in the midwest and south, as my father changed jobs here and there. We eventually wound up in Little Rock Arkansas, and I got there via train...leaving by car to Missouri, and then later from there via train again to Illinois when my parents were divorced. After I graduated from high school just north of Chicago, I rode a train to Michigan Tech in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan in 1959....dragging an old heavy trunk with all my stuff crammed inside.

Trains and the military go hand-in-hand historically speaking, but have been replaced today with planes. Still, I suspect many in the military happily elect to ride trains (or buses) as they travel about. Maybe our country will eventually return to using rail transportation more some day...like in Europe, Japan and China. I hope so.