trains

When I was a child, I was convinced that there was a certain type of criminal who specialized in pushing people in front of on-coming subway cars. I used to ride the subway with my Mom in NYC quite a bit and she was always warning me not to get too close to the yellow line because someone would "push me into the path of the train" -- I didnt realize that she meant that this might happen accidentally. Rather, I believed that every station had armies of "bad guys" looking to toss people in front of trains as they come into the station and that anyone who got too close to the edge of the platform was going down.

trainspotting

My Grandfather and dad were talking about the trains near his hometown when I was 6, and he said that "They can lift the empty carts onto the track with a pitchfork" and although now I'm pretty sure he meant to say forklift I spent the next few years thinking a farmer put train carts onto the track with his pitchfork.

Shimatta

I thought that if a train derailed that it would keep going no matter what direction. So at night everytime I heard a train, I would pray it wouldn't derail and come through my bedrooom. We didn't even live very close to ant tracks.

Christina098

I used to believe that when you flushed the toilet on a train, everything was just dumped onto the track. I was always careful not to use the bathroom while the train was stopped at a station.

Elisabeth

When my sister & I were very young we were told by our Mum not to use train toilets when in a station, as the toilet spun round when the train wasnt moving!

Tommy B

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

I used to think that if you misbehaved on a train, the driver would open the doors, tilt the train sideways and make you fall down the gap.

Anon

I used to think that the clinker and gravel you see between the rails and sleepers on the railway line was actually the "remains" of people having used the lavatories on the trains.

Sue

I used to believe that ferry boats were trains that moved above water. Then the first time I was in one, I spent the whole trip trying to see the railtracks beneath the water line. I don't have to say that I couldn't see any.

paty

I used to believe the only purpose of shoes was to prevent your socks from getting dirty. Thanks to my mum's constant nagging!

Danehli

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

Roger

I used to think that when you were waiting for a train, the driver would announce that the train was coming on a megaphone when approaching the station, and you would hear their voice from all the way down the track.

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

We didn't have trains where I grew up. I got a train set and it had a circular track. I wondered how anybody got anywhere if trains only went round in a circle. Then I discovered the world was round. Obvious wasn't it!

Dennis

There was this travel agency in my neighbourhood that was also selling train tickets. Actually, they had in their window this ad with the local train company's logo on it. As a little girl, I was really impressed by trains and was dying to get in one someday. So, my aunt told me one day, near the travel agency, that we would go there and take the train together. She must have forgotten telling me about buying tickets, because starting from that day, I believed that the train was passing in the agency building. I thought it was deep in the ground, near the subway station, and that we would have to go down a lot of stairs. It was a really big thing in my head, thinking that my little neighbourhood was big enough to have an underground train station. It took me awhile to realize that it would be impossible to have such a train station, espacially since there was one downtown... My mother laught when this year (I'm 23 now), I told her about this story.

Dobby

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 used to belive that the metro was was underwater so I alwas tried to see fish and squids and sharks I was so depressed when I found out it was just underground I was 6

Iziah

When I was little I thought that trains crossed from one track to another like you could do with cars in Scalextric, by the driver shifting a joystick to the left or right.
Nobody told me they had connecting tracks at junctions!

Rob

I used to believe that the trains in Thomas the Tank Engine were real, but rare and special, and that other trains were "regular" or "ordinary" trains that didn't have a face.

Luke Barber

for a long time i thought that the only trains in the U.S. were the ones in the NYC subway line. the other trains would have been too outdated to outlast the 50s

josieg