I suppose I've always been in love with trains. As a small boy living on a farm near Marcelline, Missouri, I had a unique claim to fame: my Uncle Mike was engineer on the Santa Fe's accommodation train that ran between Marcelline and Fort Madison. That was something to brag about to my schoolmates at a time when railroads loomed large in the scheme of things and steam engines were formidable and exciting.
We fellows would marvel at the tall-stacked engines that pulled into and out of the depot opposite the park where we played, huffing with steam and trailing nebulous smoke plumes. One day in about 1909, when I was eight or nine years old and full of nerve, my buddies dared me to climb into the cab of one of them that stood there, temporarily deserted, and pull the whistle cord. I did so, but as soon as the whistle shrieked I quickly climbed down in a panic and ran like the dickens.
[…]
