(The Missoulian posted the following article by Vince Devlin on its websit eon June 11.)
MISSOULA, Mont. — Six-year-old Mickey Jones pressed his face to the glass of the Montana Daylight on Monday morning and softly began to sing.
“I’ve been working on the railroad, all the live long day. I’ve been working on the railroad just to pass the time away.”
“He started as soon as we got on the train,” said Kara Saffel, a para-educator at Hellgate Elementary. “He never took his eyes from the window and he didn’t stop singing ’til the train stopped.”
Jones was one of 120 Hellgate Elementary kindergartners who kicked off the final week of their first school year by climbing aboard the Montana Rockies Rail Tours train at 8 a.m. on a cooler-than-most field trip.
For nearly all of them, it was the first train trip of their young lives.
It was over in about 40 minutes. The Montana Daylight, on a regularly scheduled passenger run from Sandpoint, Idaho, to Livingston, loaded the youngsters at the depot in Missoula and dropped them off in a field near the Clinton Elementary School, where the children boarded buses for the journey back to Missoula and a picnic at Bonner Park.
But it was enough time for the rambunctious 6-year-olds to discover that the train’s seats could recline with the push of a button, and that if asked, attendants would provide pillows and blankets.
“Can I get an apple, too?” asked Sariah Muns.
Blankets and pillows appeared. Quickly, several of the kids had pulled the curtains on the Montana scenery and were under the covers.
None of them slept, rest assured.
In one row of seats, Zoe Munsey, Whitney Lindsley, Kayla McCampbell, Whitney Bowditch and Courtney Carl popped up the footrests, reclined their seat backs and took to rail travel like old pros. It was the first train trip for all five, but four of them said they’d flown in airplanes before.
“I’ve been on a plane four times,” Munsey said. “Once to my grandma’s house, once on a trip, once on another trip, and once to my grandma’s house again.”
So which is better, trains or planes?
“I like the train a lot better,” Munsey said. “On a plane there’s no room. You can’t move around.”
“And you don’t have to wear a seat belt on the train,” added Bowditch.
Michael VanCanagan, a student in Marsha Hamilton’s kindergarten class, was sort of the reason the kids got to go. Michael’s dad, Bill, an attorney with the Missoula law firm of Datsopoulos, MacDonald and Lind, represents RailQuest America Inc., which operates Montana Rockies Rail Tours. He figured he might be able to talk his client into a free ride for Michael and his classmates now that the seasonal passenger trains are running from Sandpoint to Livingston.
“My second-grade teacher did this every year,” Bill VanCanagan said. “When you were in kindergarten and first grade at Lewis & Clark Grade School, you always looked forward to your train trip when you got to Mrs. Haynes’ class. I don’t know if it was Amtrak back then, and I don’t know how she arranged it, but it was the same trip we’re making today, out to Clinton. It was such a thrill.”
“Bill suggested it about a month ago,” said Hamilton, Michael’s teacher. “My grandfather was a conductor. He passed away when I was 5, but he used to take us on trains, and I can still remember those trips. I was thrilled when Bill suggested this. It’ll be a great memory for the kids.”
Marcia Pilgeram, president and CEO of RailQuest America, joined Lynda Frost of Montana Rail Link – which owns the tracks the Montana Daylight runs on – and former Missoula Police Chief Pete Lawrenson for a train-related safety talk for the kids, and it’s possible a few of them even heard it.
Lawrenson, now chief of security for MRL, cautioned the children about the dangers of playing on or around railroad tracks, tunnels and bridges. He explained that the time-honored kids’ pastime of putting a penny on a track for an oncoming train to flatten can have serious consequences.
“The train can squirt the penny out, and when it comes out it’s razor sharp and red hot,” he explained later. “It shoots out of there like a bullet. It doesn’t happen every time, but it can happen.”
Youngsters seated at the front of the cars where Lawrenson gave his “Operation Lifesaver” talk, listened. But the farther back you got, the louder it got. The children, who filled up two of the 10 passenger cars, were excited about everything and chattering away as the train crossed the Clark Fork River while water churned over the Milltown Dam spillways.
With the exception of a few – like Jones, who kept his eyes peeled out the window as he sang – most were more curious about the seats and attendants than the passing scenery.
But if they’re like Bill VanCanagan or Marsha Hamilton, decades from now, they’ll remember the first time they rode a train.