I'm a produck of publik edukashun, two, Charlie. And I wood hav sufferd the same fate frum my dad if'n I'd dun sumthin' like that!
People forget that THEY are responsible for their children's education, not the schools!
On a lighter note... My house wasn't near a railroad, but my elementary school was right next to the Southern Pacific line that headed northeast out of Houston, TX. I guess it's all U.P. now. We'd all wave to the engineer when the trains would pass, and we all thought that they were blowing their horns for us...in reality there was a crossing right nearby!
I think I've told this story on here before, but I used to have dreams about there being a railroad out in the woods behind the house where I grew up (in Porter, TX). I was exploring around on
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/default.asp recently and found an old RR grade in the woods! Further investigation revealed that it likely belonged to the Bender Lumber Company out of Humble (pronounced "umble"). I saw a few photos of Bender's locomotives, too. One appeared to be a three-truck Shay. Pretty cool!
Here's the RR grade I was talking about:
http://terraserver.homeadvisor.msn.com/image.asp?S=12&T=2&X=346&Y=4169&Z=15&W=2
Move up one grid space from that location (if you are viewing it in the Large mode) and you will see two parallel roads running north/south. I lived about two-thirds of the way down the right-hand road on the right-hand side. I used to walk down to the San Jacinto River with my friends all the time. We walked right over that old grade and didn't even realized it!
-Rory