Jamestown Field Trip

	The rain stopped long enough to drive down to Jamestown for the first steam train ride of the season at the Railtown Museum. Beauty and the Beast's clock - Bart as Cogsworth - was kind enough to organize it for us. Hmmm, interesting that the clock took care of this on the day before the time changed...
	The train was waiting for us at the station and fortunately the rain stayed away for the day. There were just a few wisps of steam in the air from the locomotive.
	It was a great family outing, Ben, our stage manager, his wife Jami and their kids along with Bart joined with Berlynn before boarding the train.
	Our engineer waited patiently for everything to be ready, he had his hand on the whistle, ready to let her blow.
	When he pulled the cord and a head of steam came out of the whistle, we all reached for our ears. It was amazing how loud that big overgrown tea kettle sounded!
	Old Number 28 was ready to pull us down the tracks.
	More of the cast joined us inside the car with Berlynn sitting next to Marianne, who is one of the silly girls, and Becky, who plays Mrs. Potts, ready to ride either forwards or backwards - we weren't sure which direction we were going to head out.
	We turned around and were happily surprised to see that the car host was our own Tommy, who is often an usher or volunteer house manager at the theater.
	The locomotive actually pulled us backwards to the rock quarry in the canyon where we were headed for our short 20 minute ride. We found out later that our whistle woke up another cast member, Elena as we went past her house. (Sorry Elena!)
	Number 28 disconnected from the three cars and went up the siding to reconnect and pull us back into the station properly with the locomotive at the front of the train.
	Some of the little ones took advantage of the rocking motion of the train and took a short nap on the way back to Jamestown.
	Of course the soothing movement and the clickety clack of the rails effects some of the older ones as well as they catch up on a little sleep.
	We discovered that all kids enjoy trains, from 1 to 100. But no one summed our day up better than Ben's son Chandler who grinned from ear to ear! Thank you Bart, for a wonderful outing!