While it's fun for the kids it's also important for them to get used to and respect trains. I've found that kids who grow up in places where trains aren't as popular don't develop a healthy fear of them. When my son saw train tracks for the first time at 2 yrs old his first reaction was to run towards them. So trips like these can teach kids how to properly act at a train station.

When I first read fear I thought you meant of the terrible infrastructure of trains in the US :)

I've taken the train in Minneapolis from the mall to downtown several times, purely for the novelty of it. We have a lot of freight trains in Iowa. Passenger, not so much.

I live a few blocks from that train, so I wind up taking it all the time to get to the mall or downtown. The novelty wears off, and you wind up mostly worried about having to share your ride with packs of unruly teenagers, or sports fans heading downtown who can't resist saying racist things about our various African immigrant neighbors. It's a pleasure or a drag, depending on the manners of those who share the ride.

One Iowan to another: you didn't ride a train in Minneapolis. You rode a streetcar (tram in British). And yes, only the southeast corner of Iowa is served at all by passenger rail. Would be nice if they extended the Hawkeye Express to CR, or better yet, Amtrak service from Davenport to IC to DSM. Alas, not enough $$$ to make it worth doing.

The Northstar line north of Minneapolis is a "real" train that run on normal tracks:

https://www.metrotransit.org/northstar-line

The lines that goes between the Mall of America, downtown Minneapolis, and St Paul are light rail, and are faster than what would normally be considered a "tram" or "streetcar".

I'd think it still counts as being a train. Obviously it's short-distance light rail, but it's still got all the main feature's of a train.

I mainly mentioned it since the parent comment was about a group of girls getting on the train purely for the experience of being on the train, and my experience seemed pretty similar.

Don't know that it terribly matters one way or the other though I guess.

If you really want to get technical, the key defining characteristic of a train is that it consists of multiple connected railway vehicles that move together. A railway vehicle is of course a vehicle that runs on tracks.

So there are some tram/streetcar/light rail systems out there (like the one in New Orleans) that consist of individual railway vehicles, and are thus not trains.

Amtrak is heavy rail - that's light rail, which is kinda different.

>large party of school children going on a trip on the Caltrain.

Haha when I took Caltrain daily to mountain view this was my nightmare. Bluetooth headphones and a white noise app were a requirement.

Those field trip days, and the rides home on baseball game days... I do not miss that commute.

I take the Caltrain almost daily to mountain view, and I feel the exact opposite. Usually I look around and everyone has their bose headphones on while working on their macbook pro. It feels like were all drones, working 24/7 waiting to die. Where as game days/school trips are the highlight of my commute, it feels more human IMO.

I grew up in the eastbay, and at least while I was growing up, the bart train was a friendly environment of people interacting with one another. Obviously it came with some not so pleasant things (i.e. homelessness and unwanted touching) but more human none-the-less.

Knowing I was going to miss the last "Baby Bullet" out of SF to San Jose because a meeting ran late was one of the biggest kick in the guts. I do not miss that commute at all.

If you don't mind me asking where did you move to ?

Downtown SF

I used to like to ride the Staten Island Ferry in both directions in the middle of the night just for the peacefulness of it. That and long 3am walks through midtown east/UES were fantastic ways to clear my head.

We did a school trip to ride the surfliner from Ventura to Santa Barbara a few times. Also once to ride the historic train in Fillmore. Good times.

Ha my children both did that in preschool (aged about 3) here in the UK.

I don't think it would have been many children's first trip either, just a cheap morning's entertainment for the nursery...

I mean, my 4 year old son begs me to go on the train all the time.