This Exeter Life: Riding the Rails

You’ll never guess what I did the other day...I got to Dover without a car!

In the nearly six years I’ve lived within earshot and walking distance of the Exeter train station, I’ve only taken the Amtrak to Boston two or three times. As a former urbanite and a proponent of public transportation, that makes me sad. But scheduling and cost often keeps me off the rails. This time, good fortune was on my side and I bought a ticket for the 6:07.

What is it about trains that are so magical? It seems to me that Europeans and kids have a love of trains that the rest of us lost somewhere along the way. I used to look after a little boy who, like many children, was obsessed with trains (Thomas and Friends, of course). Left to his own devices, he would have happily split his days between playing trains on the living room floor and trips to the rail station to watch the Downeaster and freight trains arrive and depart.

As I sat on the platform the other day waiting for my first train ride north out of Exeter, a small crowd of children and their tenders appeared one after another. Some took seats.  Some peered down the tracks excitedly straining to see the expected train. A quick conversation with a young girl and her father sitting on the bench next to me revealed they weren’t travelers at all. They had come to see the train arrive. To me the train was just transportation, a way to avoid having to drive two cars home at the end of the night. But to this collection of my knee-high neighbors, it was an event.

I started to wonder: when do trains go from being a special event to mere transportation?

As I whizzed alongside the wandering Squamscott River, through its attendant marshes and behind old homes, I was reminded of what a delight train travel is. I was seeing the landscape unfold in a way that isn’t possible from a road-bound car, bus, or bike. The scenery slid past my black framed window like my own private film strip. For the length of my train ride, I wasn’t responsible for getting myself to my destination. It was blessed relief (however temporary) from the need to navigate my way through life.

I would have done well in the late 19^th century in the golden age of rail travel. Back when you could hop a street car and travel a few blocks or a few miles. Look at old photographs of downtown Exeter sometime and you’ll clearly see trolley car rails running along Water and Front Streets. Just imagine it. Instead of fighting your way through downtown at 5:00 pm, alone in your car, you could ring the stop bell and hop off at your desired destination, all the while smiling and waving at your neighbors. Ok, maybe I’m romanticizing it. But still. It’d be nice.

Back in modern times, it was a scant 20 minutes after I left Exeter that I arrived in Dover. As I walked the half a mile to my friend’s house, I noticed a bounce in my step. And that’s when I realized, what had started out as transportation had turned into a special event.

I only wish is hadn’t been priced like one...