When I was a kid, me and my neighbourhood buddies often played in the trees and bushes that were growing beside the railway embankment. Climbing the trees, building tree houses...

For some reason we thought we were not allowed to be playing there. So every time we would hear a train coming, someone would yell "PHOTO!!"

And we would all quickly turn our backs to the passing train, covering our faces with our hands.

We believed the engine driver would take our pictures and report us to the police :-)

Dutch

My mom always said that if the guy in the caboose waved at you and you didn't wave back it meant you were not wearing any underpants. Imagine a small child standing there waving like crazy and sometimes there would be no one on the caboose.

C.A.

Although I am too young to remember the old trams in Britain (except in Blackpool), my parents and I have been involved with the National Tramway Museum in Derbyshire for many years and I have been going there from an early age. When I was small I thought the tram drivers just had to turn the controller handle round and round as if it were a coffee grinder, and that the controller handle made the wheels go round and round. So whenever my parents got me to grind some coffee for them in the coffee grinder, I liked to pretend I was driving a tram!

Alan

i live in chicago, and when i was little, my mom and me took the electric train downtown. i fell asleep and when i woke up i looked out the window and i said, "mommy look....we're in China." to my dissapointment, my mom said, "no that's china town...we're still in chicago." i was mad, but hey...kids believe everything.

Mallory

A friend of mine and I (around 3rd grade) were looking at a globe and pointing out various places like the United States, the oceans, etc. She then told me that the thick line running around the middle of the globe was the railroad track. It floated over the oceans and allowed people to get to wherever they needed to go!

H Bomb

one time i saw a movie where this guy jumped out of a train and didnt get a scratch well ever since then until i was 8 i wanted to jump off a train too so one time i was on a train and i literally tried to jump off...luckily the doors to the outside were locked

fabtastic

I used to believe that trains had no brakes or anything, so they couldn't stop. I don't know how people got on and off the trains, but they just went by fast so I figured they couldn't stop.

cool cat

I live in house just opposite to turn-out for streetcars. As a very little child, looking through the window at two railways, I was sure there are THREE tracks for streetcars - the middle was for me between two real tracks. I argued with my grandma all the time how many tracks there were, and I understood grandmother was right when had realized the streetcar driving "middle" track should have stopped when two real tracks come together.

Polish wolf

we have a local railway network where we live,bombay(India). i once asked my uncle if our station was India and the next station the next country (Pakistan) and so on...

aks

When I was young I liked those flattened penies. So I would put pennies on the railroad tracks and let the trains flatten them, but one time my mom caught me doing this and see told me that if I did that I might derail a train. It scared me so much that I never put a pennie on a track again.

Matt

i used to believe that if you put a penny on a train tracks that it would derail it

ROSS

As a kid I was often taken to the train station to watch the trains come and go. I observed how the switchmen operated the switches to send trains down one track or another. In this case, they pulled up a lever to change a switch, and the lever seemed to block the "wrong" track, that is the one the train wasn't supposed to go proceed on. I got the idea that that was how the switches worked, blocking the wrong track, so if a train started down the wrong track, it would hit the lever, bounce back, repeatedly if necessary, until it happened to go down the right track, the one not blocked by any lever.

Jeff

When I was 5, we lived in the country for a year. There was a rail line that passed right near the bottom of our vegetable garden; I could see the trains from my bedroom window. I would stay up all night watching them. At the end of the year we moved to Winnipeg, and I just assumed that there would be a train through our backyard there, too. I was crushed when there wasn't.

Matt

When I first heard of the Underground Railroad I thought it was like a subway passage but a normal train went through it, and while the trains were going through african americans and the Underground Railroad helpers would just be down there selling clean clothes and food to African Americans. I thought that the "rail road" just lead straight to the northern states

Person

I thought that Left Luggage at a railway station was on the left hand side and I never figured why there was no right luggage. I finally twigged when I heard the expression when I was in my twenties!

Doh!

When I was little, my family and I took a trip into New York City. We went via subway, and spent the entire day underground, without coming up to the surface. After returning home, I was feverishly wondering: "What's on top of New York City?"

Polemidas

I saw a shop called "London Underground" in Shrewsbury, and I assumed that it was actually a London Underground station! (I was born in London, so I had travelled on the tube before)

Anon