Toot Toot I’m A Train Driver

Toot toot!! When I was a young boy, many years ago, nearly every lad wanted to be a train driver when they grew up. Except Roger and he wanted to be in sales and marketing! There’s always one.

Train Drivers

I don’t think one lad I knew ever became a train driver when they left school or a pilot. Come to think of it, the school I went to, most of the pupils probably grew up to be inmates of their local prison! I’m only joking, they probably all turned out to be very nice people indeed. Although I would have ennjoyed being a train driver, I never did make a career as one. Probably the nearest I came to being one was visiting the local railway museum at Tyseley in Birmingham.

Old Grandad Me

Fast forward nearly 60 years (gulp) and now like most of the population of this giant ant farm I suddenly have a lot of spare time on my hands. Roll back a couple of months to Christmas, before anyone had any idea of what was about to be unleashed on planet earth. My eldest daughter and her husband treated me to an X-Box. Yes, old grandad me and I have a new state of the art X-Box to play what seems almost an infinite number of realistic games. No wonder they call it virtual reality. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t hide myself away in the bedroom for 38 hours everyday playing shoot em ups.

Football

One of the games that came with it is Fifa 19 which is a football game. Oh boy, I’ve had some fun on that, managing Brentford FC and taking them to the top and winning every possible cup there is to win. Mainly because I keep the settings on beginner/novice level. There’s a racing car game too which I was playing with the son in law when he visited before the lockdown put a block on it. I came last in every race, simply because I couldn’t cheat by keeping the settings on ‘simple’. Then I discovered the joys of Train Simulator 2020 and my life changed.

Casey Jones

I’m thinking of changing my name to Casey Jones, the famous train driver from the wild west. Well, I think that’s who he was. “All aboarrrrrrddd” although I’ve heard others say they’re all bored. I can now jump into the cab of the 9:15 am from Paddington to Reading, start her up, unlock the doors for the passengers, let them board, lock the doors and off we chug. Watch out for those red lights, toot toot, slow down when the signal man tells you and make a safe and gentle approach into Reading station. What great fun I’m having. Park up at Reading and take the 10:40 am back to Paddington using a different locomotive. Tomorrow, I’m off to the Pennines in one of those big, powerful HSR engines. I can hardly wait. Toot toot, the Chatanooga Choo Choo is on his way.

Here’s a link to Train Sim 2020.