I grew up in south London, and there was a London Underground line and a main line railway near us. Both were electrified with live rails, so I thought all railway lines were live, until one day we went to a preserved railway. As we were walking around the depot yard I said to my Mum "It's dangerous to step on these tracks. Aren't they live?" To which she answered that that was only on the Underground and the Southern Region (and a few other places such as Merseyside). My Mum tells me that as a child she had likewise thought that all railway lines were live. It didn't occur to her that steam trains didn't need live rails! Still, I suppose it is safe to think that, as it deters you from trespassing on railway lines!

Alan, Sheffield

when i was little i used to believe that if you stepped over the yellow line on the platform at the train station that the train would whoosh past and you would get caught on it and never be seen again

Bec

As I was little I thought the rails in the city for the tram were electrical - so I never stepped on them, I jumped like a rabbit, as I didn't want to get an electrical shock. Today I know better but I still don't feel well, when I have to cross those rails and I try to avoid, stepping on them... (I am 31).

Polestar

I used to think that the upper struture on the caboose was the rest room.

Anon

My younger brother swears that I told him if he stood between the rails on the railroad track, he couldn't be injured. Yes, he's still alive!

Mary

i thought that the train running behind my house would come off the track and run into the house if i didn't wake up and stand on the couch looking out the window screaming at the top of my lungs... mom and dad were glad we moved from that house

trainphobic

We could hear a train loud and clear (a couple miles away) at my aunt's house and I would stand along the back fence and look both ways across it to see where the train would come steaming through the yard.

Sarah

My grandfather told me that if train conductors waved out their little windows their arms would get stuck and they would have to stay that way. Then we would wave at the passing trains, more often than not getting the engineer to wave back. I always felt a little guilty about making the poor guy be stuck, but that didn't stop me from waving.

Lily

I just read this belief

I used to believe that St Pancras station was actually St Pancreas. It wasn't until I was corrected - at age 21 - that I realised what I was saying...

I'm 38 and have just had a belief shattered!

Anon

Up until my late 20's I thought Amtrak was owned by Amway. I grew up in Amwaylandia, you see, and everything was owned by them. I mean, the big hotel in town was the Amway Grand Plaza, so why not Amtrak?

lastewie

One morning when I was four my father left to catch a train into the city for work. He returned a short time later because the trains were not operating that day. My mum then told me that there was a 'train strike'. This was the first time that I heard the word stike (where you stop work to protest for higher pay and or better conditions), I actually thougth of the word 'stripe'. Being very young I had no idea what a strike was so I pictured all of the trains in the city being covered in black stripes (such as being tagged with graffiti) and infested with nasty black vines which made them unsafe for taking passengers during the strike.

Anon

I have once asked my dad: how does the train driver know where our destinatin is !

Rajiv Renganathan

when i was a child i used to belive while the train crossed the bridge on the river it would collapse, if i looked down from the window coz the train would be so heavy and would loose its balance

Anon

I used to think the underground railrooad was actually a well built under ground railway system built by the blacks and abolitionists to escape the slave states under GROUND!!!

Draqula

My mom would tell me to stay off the railroad tracks because the trains were silent and super fast.

Roger

I used to believe that it was a strange coincidence that every time the train I was sitting in passed a railroad crossing, the gates were closed. When we travelled by car, the gates were almost never closed.

Stefan

Lots of people here admit shamefacedly to clearing up childhood misconceptions only in their teens or even twenties. Is late sixties a record?

When I was little we used to go for holidays at Brighton. A special train called the Brighton Bell took us there. My memory from age 2 was reinforced for several years by the picture of it in my trains picture book. The name Brighton Bell made perfect sense to me because it was, unusually for that date, an electric train. A steam train on that route would no doubt have been called the Brighton Whistle. I had no occasion to think about it after the age of maybe six, but about thirty years later a magazine article about the history of sea-bathing jogged my mind and I thought "Er, maybe that should be the 'Brighton Belle' ?" But by then I was hardly sure this was a real memory it would have been trouble to find out. So I waited another thirty years for internet and Google to be invented and sure enough the other day found out there was this famous and in its day avant-garde train called the Brighton Belle; images on the net fit with such very pale memory as remains to me.

So that misconception is cleared up now, shows I do get there in the end. I get there slowly but oh yes I get there I get there.

eppenguin