Rare mileage is a fun metric....

Does Metrolink from LAUPT to San Pedro and back on the Alameda Corridor count a pretty rare passenger mileage?

Some other fun metrics are......

Collecting rides on strange equipment. Like the cab ride in a real nice danish trainset they were touring a few years back from Simi Valley to LAUPT.

Or, like riding Mayor Judy Wright's and Sir Topping Hats demonstration of that awful "third world" Siemens "DMU" rail bus/"bubble train", which rode like a buckboard on the Pasadena sub, with that A-A configuration (the Escodido-Oceanside BB configured cars ride much better), from Arcadia to San Dimas and back, in the 90's.

Or, new commuter rail/LRT lines on day one-I've been to six-

Or active fll sized Steamers ridden behind- only 6-many yet to go on that bucket list-

Or, yesterday, with Running Wolf at the helm of a Breda "pig" to downtown LA over the 2nd District high bridge-not so rare any more with 40,000 daily-

Can you say Trainspotting?

Or, in my case the collection of classes and types of engines I've run-and, I've run some weird stuff.

Have you ever hostled a lone DD-35 dummy? Do you know where the hostler controls are? Rollin Roberts caught us doing that one day and chewed us out royally.....

I even taught my son to run a US Army RS down at Perris, the docent was certainly surprised that I knew about brake systems that old, but then, I worked Alameda Street, out of J Yard with, 1940's SP switcr and done the pull down in the Taylr C yard with Baldwins with De La Verne marine engines. Which take forever to load, but have good brakes which kept you from going through the red signal at Dayton tower interlocking.

Didn't you railfans ever want to run a pile of junk like a GE U-50 "U-boat" backward on the Mountain Local? Unfortunately, that can lead to derailments, due to that screwed up BB-BB configuation, on the Colton wye, some say due to too sharp a radius (or, a really po'd hoghead jeking the jam?), and you should have seen the seat fly out the window!

Or, how about banging your shins in the dark, on those damned 415 center cab Alcos that Rollin Roberts designed as a poor substitute for a PE center cab?

Screwed up engines, great engines, rare mileage, rare cars, rare vehicles-even a trip on the Gold Line for a little business downtown, or a night at the Music Center-All train rides are good train rides! There are so many fun metrics to the enjoyment of railroading and rail travel.

Someday SMART will also traverse some real nice areas and that should even be nice. So someday, we might even convince the "mouse" that trains are good, too?