trains

My girlfriend (who's 20 yrs old) didn't realise until the other year that trains have wheels. She'd assumed they were somehow hovering.

SuzieQ

When I was a kid I always used to wonder how a train turned to go in the opposite direction. I always believed that there was some huge space where the train could turn around

Kammy

I used to believe that trains ran along the roofs of houses. I had yet to discover the concept of perspective.

Mildred

As a child, my mother lived near railroad tracks. She and her siblings would throw pebbles at the passing trains, trying to hit them. One time my mom was the only successful kid, and watched the train continue on it's way. Well, for some reason the train derailed on the corner down the tracks, spilling it's load of nickels everywhere. For years my mom believed she knocked that train over with her pebble.

Melissa

On subway platforms in NYC, there are these bright orange bars painted near the edge of the platform to warn you to stay back. My mom once told me that if i step on that bar, i'd get run over by the train. So natuarally i rationalized that there was a very small but very dangerous train which would run your foot over if you stepped on this bar.

Alejandro

After seeing Thomas the Tank Engine, I believed that all the locomotives in the world had a face.

Joe

I live near the Forth Rail Bridge which has supports that make it look like a Big Dipper roller coaster. When I was younger I used to believe the trains went up and down the humps like a roller coaster and always wondered why they never fell off. When I finally realised my misconception and told my dad, turns out he used to believe the same thing!

Alison

i used to think that large trains worked by remote control, because i never saw the drivers. i also thought that subways didn't have tracks and could just slide along like worms in tunnels. growing up in country south australia, this belief lasted a long time, as i had never seen a subway until a trip to sydney when i was 9.

Anon

I believed that people riding diesel locomotives (as opposed to steam or electric) were notorious for fighting with each other. I have no idea where this notion came from.

Eddie

I used to think all train lines in London were connected to ones all over England, so if you went from Baker Street to Yorkshire, for instance, then you'd be on the same train the whole time, before realising that they all terminated at different stations in
London!

Natasha

I used to believe that the 'Flying Scotsman' was a guy in a beret and kilt zooming around the sky like a superhero - not just a boring old train. Sam aged 10.

Sam also used to believe that The Beetles were a group of animated cartoon insects that sang.

Sam

when i was young, my mother would take us kids to london on the under ground once a year to see farther christmas. i thougth a man would sit in front with a big spade, when we got to the tunnel.

Brian

My sister told me that when riding a train if I heard a noise that sounded like a the train's horn it was in fact a creature called a 'Beebarp' getting run over. 'Beebarps' apparently ate children and kept their left over toe nails on necklaces.

MC

I used to think underground trains actually descended into the tunnel, like a rollercoaster.

Natasha

I used to believe that trains were full of small horses inside. And those small horses' legs were responsible for the train movement.

Carlos Sicilia

When i first moved to London when i was little, My mum told me that all the screeching and scrapping noises the tube train made was people who had got hit by a train's bones grinding on the rails! I stayed well away from the yellow line because i didnt want my bones grinding on the rails for all eternity!

Tasha

A long time ago I was told that the big brake wheel in the cab of the train was in fact a steering wheel and thought train drivers were pretty clever at keeping their trains on the narrow rails. Then one day I saw tube trains (that still has a big brake wheel) and thought their drivers were even cleverer at being able to steer their trains in the dark!

Paul

When I was younger, ok, not that young, when I was a Teenager, I went on the Eurostar from London to Paris and was disappointed to find that most of the journey took place in a dark tunnel. I was expecting portholes in the tunnel so you could see the water and the fish.....

A Adam

My dad used to be a driver on the old steam trains
Whenever we were waiting at the level crossing gates my dad always told me which direction the train would be coming from, when I enquired how he was always right he said "I can smell em, I can smell em". Of course he was looking at the signals

Janet

When I was very young I remember my parents taking me on our first holiday abroad. It was to Italy, and as air travel was expensive then, we went on what was known as "the boat train". They led me to believe (or maybe it was my imagination!)that we took the train down to Dover where it was loaded on a boat and sailed to France- was them offloaded and continued it's journey.

I remember trying to work out how long this boat must have been!!!

John Stevens