Look Margo! It’s a train! Toot Toot!
Think the eye-spy game. To break up the boredom of the endless bitumen, we come up with road games. Trips to the interior of Australia can be long, but they can be made fun by inventing silly games appropriate to the landscape. Hundreds of kilometres start to look the same, but for one small thing. Road signs.
This game requires a high-pitched Toot Toot! to be piped across the cabin… and Margo just LOVES IT!
“Shut up, Michael!”
She absolutely loves it!!!!
Toot Toot Train! goes like this: see the sign, you shout out Toot Toot!
It’s like Punch Buggy without the bruises!
The irony about this sign is that it shows an old-fashioned steam train, yet we’ve never seen one like it on any railway line for about a thousand years or more. Sure, it’s romantic, but trains like that exist in museums and history books.
So what’s it doing warning drivers, pedestrians and anyone else near a line to watch out for something that’s never going to roll past them?
Who knows?
I guess it’s a bit like the camera sign that’s still being used to indicate the best place to take a photo. Most cameras today look more like smartphones. The one on the sign is old-fashioned by today’s standards, almost irrelevant to the generations of people who have never seen one, much less used one.
Back to Toot Toot Train!
Steam trains are more exciting. Steam trains run on steam. It allows steam trains to go Toot Toot!
New trains run silently. New trains are boring.
I have a model steam engine on the shelf beside me to remind me of those days of steam-powered things. It goes Toot Toot! too!
On rare occasions, I’ll fire it up just to make sure it’s still working. See the little whistle on top. It goes Toot Toot! And if my steam engine goes Toot Toot! then I go Toot Toot! too!
“Shut up, Michael!”
Enjoy my novel. Its steam comes from places that are not made of steel and copper. 🙂
–Michael (Dark Fiction. Author of SEETHINGS (the first book), free for a limited time)
SEETHINGS promises a gripping psychological thriller that blends murder, passion, and secrets of a sexless marriage. Forman’s vivid prose draws readers into a world where lightning illuminates the skies and hidden truths. As the storm clouds gather, Mitchell’s journey promises to unravel more than just the mystery of the murders.
Download eBook Here Now (Free, Limited Time)
‘Forman’s writing style is artful, with the protagonist Mitchell’s warped thought processes masterfully exposed. The author has a powerful and vivid command of language and his word pictures are stark and disturbingly real.’
Linda J Bettenay, author of ‘Secrets Mothers Keep’ and ‘Wishes For Starlight’
Discover more from Michael Forman – Author of Dark Fiction & Drama
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.