Well, I never 'jumped a freight car' like Bobert (what a wonderful story!). My train story is much more prosaic. As a child I lived in Peterborough, UK - which is on the main London to Ediburgh line. In the early 60s there were still steam trains (I'm sure that someone will be able to tell me the exact year that they were replaced). Our class went on an outing to London to visit the British Museum and see a Shakespeare play (Macbeth, I think) at the 'Old Vic'. The main thing I remember about this trip is that the sausages, that we had for lunch, in Lyons Corner House, were exactly the same colour as the Egyptian mummies in the British Museum! On the way back the train broke down and our teacher managed to procure a crate of fizzy pop to keep the troops from getting fractious. I also remember walking down the corridor and 'colliding' with a cloud of garlic as an Italian family, in a carriage with the door open, tucked into a meal of salami and bread; as a British child, brought up in the 50s, garlic was very strange and unfamiliar.

I realise that I'm dimly recalling a lost world here - steam trains and Lyons Corner Houses all long gone - and everyone eats garlic now. Not sure if the 'Old Vic' still exists but, if it does, it's probably not the red velvet, tasseled, Victorian place that I recall (anyone know?).