As A Kid Visiting Bernalillo, I Was Always, Always Drawn To The Railroad

East Avenida Bernalillo at the railroad. They now have a Roadrunner train stop in Bernalillo, so there's passenger traffic in and out of town that didn't exist when I was young.

I LOVE the power and majesty of trains! I've been drawn to them since I was a toddler.

This train is heading south, at Los Ranchos Rd. and the railroad, in the North Valley.

East Avenida Bernalillo at the railroad. Looking south.

This stretch of track ran past my grandmother's house, including a very small house I lived in at the age of three, and so it features very prominently in my life. The trains were everything. The signals look different now than when I was a kid - they've been replaced. Still, this place was once the center of my Universe.

I sometimes still dream about the trains here. I remember once dreaming about standing on the tracks. A friendly Santa Fe passenger train stopped, chatted, picked me up, and dropped me into a hatch on its top. "That's a very interesting dream," my father said. Continuing with a Freudian analysis, he said: "That means you want to return to the womb." "Womb? I don't know where that is," I replied. My father explained, and I decided he must be nuts.

I remember another dream, where I was hiding in a Stonehenge-like ring of Coldspot refrigerators in the center of my grandmother's kitchen, and an angry passenger train was circling round and round in the kitchen trying to gain entry. I was safe, but barely so.

East Avenida Bernalillo at the railroad. Looking north.

Lucero Avenue crossing of the railroad, looking west. This place scared me when I was a kid. There were no signals then, and my father told a story of seeing a car stall here as it came up the embankment. A train came along, hit the car, and killed the occupant. Always worried about our car stalling here. That's what cars do when crossing railroads - they stall.

Lucero Avenue crossing of the railroad, looking north.

Lucero Avenue crossing of the railroad, looking south. Be sure to look both ways. Don't stall!

This trestle just north of Sandia Pueblo has been here, like, forever.

Southbound on Highway 313 (formerly Highway 85), towards Albuquerque. The embankment is so tall here, and intimidating!

I remember traveling with my father along this stretch of road, northbound, in the opposite direction. It was early - 5:30 a.m. - before sunrise. There was a crisis of some sort, and my sister and I were being taken to Gramita's house in Bernalillo (I think my mom had gone into labor). We were keeping pace with a northbound train, and I could look up from our car and see the train engineer's face in his cab's window.

Coming into view of Sandia Pueblo.

Sandia Pueblo. Been here for many hundreds of years (although it did come close to extinction in the 18th Century for a variety of reasons). Doing well today!