(August 17, 2023) Robert McQuillan reflects on a lifestyle choice…

It’ll soon be Father’s Day and I’m reminded of my dad and my childhood. Let me share something personal here… since childhood I’ve had a thing about steam trains!

Many a Sunday afternoon my parents would take me for a walk in the country (few people had cars back then and walking was the in-thing). Sometimes we’d cross a railway line. If I heard train whistles from down the track, and realised a steam locomotive was coming, I would insist we stop and wait until little wide-eyed me would watch it come by!

Growing older I’d be off with mates to the Saturday afternoon flicks. John Wayne was soon my hero and the first movie I saw him in he jumped onto the rear carriage of a big steam loco.

Following one’s heart
But more than the Duke was on my heart. Locos were certainly were! Especially as dad was an engineer – the official title for locomotive drivers in those yesterdays of steam trains, and I was proud of him.

Came the day which I will never forget when Dad took me – just a ‘little fellow’ in short pants – down to the local, large city rail station and explained about the (to me) ‘huge monster’ that was technically called the engine. And then being lifted up onto the platform, his working domain. What a thrill, such excitement for a small boy… my heart was beating: this was like a dream come true.

The loco had been prestarted and Dad explained the controls, how the engine operated. It was a cold morning but the heat from the blazing firebox quickly warmed me physically – my heart was already on fire with curiosity. I had stared at the huge wheels, and now I gazed at the control levers that looked so heavy to little me, and then back at the tons of coal in the tender. I was elated to be on that platform, especially when Dad permitted me to pull the whistle!

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