Sami's Train Memories - Newfoundland

Don has asked me to write about my early train experiences. Whereas his were all train-watching experiences, mine involved the thrill of train travel.

In 1952, when I was five years old, my family moved to Newfoundland. We lived in a rented house in Stephenville next to Ernest Harmon Air Force Base, where my father worked as a civilian for the United States Air Force. At age five I had already moved with my family six times. Each move was exciting to me. Together with my sister and brother, I would explore our new home to find out all about it. In Newfoundland in the winter there were huge drifts of snow in which to dig snow caves. There was a light house that had a revolving beacon. It made waves of white and red light on the ceiling of my bedroom. There were rocky, cold beaches where men huddled around fires to keep warm. There were moist bogs with a startling variety of wildly colored mushrooms. One of the fun things about this new place was the railroad and the giant trains that steamed through regularly. It was here that I learned how to put a penny on the track, stand back while the train roared past, and then search for the flattened oval after the train’s wheels did their work of smashing it, and flinging it aside.

The highlight of those years in Newfoundland was a train trip we took from Stephenville south along Newfoundland’s west coast, to the Codroy Valley. The trip only took a couple of hours, but it is vivid in my mind. We were on vacation, a week-long stay at a farm outside of Tomkins. We boarded the train and sat on upholstered bench seats in a coach car. Then, surprisingly, part-way through the journey, in the middle of rolling hills, the train stopped. Staff got off of the train and picked the wild blueberries growing all around. They returned to the train, and later we were all served a bowl of those delicious berries with sugar and thick, cold cream. I had never tasted anything so wonderful.