It was the most exciting day of your young life, wasn’t it? The day you left for California to visit Grandma and your cousins. Mom and Dad kept it a secret right up until the very moment you left for the station. No doubt they felt that you and your brother would get too wound-up in anticipation. They had a point. Your baby brother, Jimmy, wouldn’t be a problem. He was just a year old, and would’ve been clueless. But you and Mike? Yeah, you two would’ve been monsters. So they sprung the whole thing on you at the last possible instant.

For a while you had no idea what was happening and, even when you stepped up into that impossibly huge railroad car, it felt like maybe you were dreaming. It was love at first sight. The soft rumbling sound, the gentle rocking motion, the Art Deco design in the cars that would inform your esthetic sense for the rest of your life, the scent of diesel fuel, the loud whoosh that signaled the opening of doors between cars. It was magical. And you loved every second.

The trip was a long one—almost two full hours—but it was anything but monotonous! In fact, the thrill of passenger rail travel had taken root deep in your soul that day, and it would remain there for the rest of your life.

You were almost sad when it was over, but then you figured that the whole point of the thing was to visit relatives, and now that you had arrived you looked forward to the California experience. But it wasn’t over yet, not by a long shot. That first ride took you only as far as Chicago, Illinois. You made a quick mental search of the pieces in your USA puzzle map and remembered that Chicago was really close to home. Right next to Wisconsin in fact. And in that instant one of the world’s great secrets revealed itself to you. Namely that it was a REALLY BIG PLACE.

In Chicago you boarded another train, the Santa Fe El Capitan. This one was even more magical than the first, and it would be your home for the next two days. Your memories of that journey will be as vivid when you are an old man in the faraway future as they are RIGHT NOW. The memories of: French Toast in the dinning car, with sunlight streaming through Venetian blinds to paint stripes across the linen table-cloth. The observation car and dome. The mysterious Hopi Indian design motifs. Trying not to fall asleep so as not to miss anything as the train cut through the night. The vast, flat farmland of Kansas, the deserts and cacti of New Mexico and Arizona. You will remember Jimmy’s incessant shrieking too, but even that couldn’t rob the moment of its majesty.

You eventually arrived in California and spent a lovely week or so exploring Southern California with your extended family, but what you will remember most from that first long-distance family vacation was the getting there in the exotically-named El Capitan. And, although it will be a while before you’re able to put it into words, you also began to understand that life itself is more about the journey than the destination.

Rail travel of this kind will have almost vanished in the future you so feverishly dream about today. There are trains here in the future and some are truly amazing. There are trains that look like rocket ships and travel about as fast, but to ride them you have to visit places like Japan and Europe. Trains as you now think of them will have all but vanished from the USA by the time you’re an old man. And you will miss them. So keep the memory fresh.

One day, many years from now, you will tell the story of the place where you are now growing up. You will do it with pictures because, as everyone keeps telling you, you will surely be an artist someday. Just remember, when the time comes, you must tell people about the trains.