Adventure Day

I had promised my nephew and his wife a special Birthday present for their son Grady. he likes trains, so I had promised to take him on a train ride. Alas, at the time of his birthday, things just had not worked out. I had a week of vacation time, but alas, between families, out off time did not co-ordinate well. Now, the last week of Sept. had been nothing but cold and rain, but, in a good way, that was good for us. I am off from work now, and it just worked out well, that Sat. Oct 3rd, was open and there were seats available on the train. This was questionable because with the fall season, a lot of people go on the train to see the fall changing of the leaves. As mentioned above, with the rain the prior week, and temps down into the 50's well, that made for some available seating. Train was due to depart the station in Titusville at 11 AM. I arrived at the house, and the kids were ready, and with directions from the Garmin, we were on the way. Evan was a great help with the navigation, but, his own personal knowledge ended at Rte 198. We went a bit beyond that. But, all was well, and we arrived with a little time to spare.







I had gotten a bit anxious as the last 15 minutes out of town, were were following a bus. Sure enough, it was going to the same place. Yikes! Well, we unloaded out of the car, and got into the station before the bus did and got out tickets. Not to worry though, there was still plenty of seating available. The train excursion for this trip was the OCTRR, or otherwise known as Oil Creek & Titusville Rail Road. All told, there were like six cars, plus one open stand up car for the passengers as well as a few freight cars. This trip as posted, was in THE VALLEY THAT CHANGED HISTORY. That was because we were running the valley where commercial oil was first discovered and refined and shipped from. Up this valley where the cliffs could be within 5 feet of the car on one side and about 15 feet from the water. All told, we crossed the Oil Creek four times on each direction. This train also had a dining car/post office. This post office is the last moving railroad post office still in existence.





Jennifer, the children's mom, had accompanied us for this adventure. Mike was involved with his work and the school. We were all excited. We found a couple of seats, and within a few minutes, we were underway. Approximately 10 minutes into the trip, the train stopped at Drakes Well Park. Here we picked up some bicyclists. They were going on closer to Oil City. And off we were once again. We found that even though the cars were riding in and original, we found that we could open the windows. The opened up about half way. This was enough for the youngsters to look out unimpeded. For them, it was an adventure. For once, while traveling, they were not seat-belted into place. They could actually get up and move around. One of the big thrills was to be able to move from one car to another while the train was underway. The floors were moving from side to side and a little up and down and you can actually see the tracks below us as we went from one car to another.



This excursion is scheduled for about a total of 3 hours. they held pretty close. For a 3 year old, 3 hours is a long time. We got a little antsy before the end, but nothing too bad. We had fun all along the way. We even enjoyed a snack! At the haly way point in Oil City, as we were waiting to load new passengers, Our engine decoupled, and went a ahead a bit, and then switched to a set of tracks right next to ours, and Then swapped ends and hooked back uo so that they could pull us back to our start point in Titusville.

After three and a quarter hours, we all arrived back at our original train station. They boys seemed to be really thrilled with just looking and watching the model train display that was set up in the lobby. After viewing the lobby/museum/gift shop, we loaded back up into the car, and with navigator Evan, we found a place to have some lunch before heading home. Even got some time in at the play area. On the way back home, the skies had darkened but no rain had fallen the whole day. Was a great trip and great company to go with.