Neil and I took the grand peeps to Cream City for some yummy ice cream this afternoon. We haven’t been here in a while. They’ve added these comfy chairs.
After ice cream, Elijah and Shelby always want to go see the trains on display at the Cookeville Depot just across the street from Cream City. They love climbing all over these things, inside and out.
They especially enjoy this train car—the caboose—where they can climb up into a crow’s nest type cubby and look out the windows.
Shelby says it’s like the Hogwart’s Express in the Harry Potter novels. And, yeah, it is.
While we were exploring the train cars, we heard the train track crossing bells going off and the train whistle blowing at the intersection down the street. And sure enough an actual real live train was on its way toward us, coming down the tracks.
What a cool surprise this was today. As many times as we’ve been to the Cookeville Depot, we’ve never seen a working train traveling on the tracks.
There’s nothing like a train that brings out the kid in you. I think Neil and I were just as excited as Shelby and Elijah.
You can see Elijah covering his ears when the engineer blew that whistle right there beside us. It was LOUD! But he got the biggest kick out of that.
The train stopped here for a minute or two. No one got on or off, except maybe one of the engineers.
This was indeed a passenger train. We could see people sitting inside through those little port holes.
In October, you can pay to ride the rails from Cookeville to Lebanon or to Monterey just to have the experience.
The Tennessee Central gliding by and picking up speed.
People on the train stood in the doorways and watched from their windows as they sailed by us. And of course we all waved happily at each other as they went on their way—I’m assuming to Monterey, maybe points beyond.
Several people sat outside the train at the tail end which was probably a lot of fun once the train really got going.
So we enjoyed some unexpected excitement during a random trip to get some ice cream on an awesome blue sky Saturday in October. Happy Fall, y’all!
