6 Signs You Were Born to Travel by Train

2. You’ve always been intrigued by the history of trains.

The railway system can transport you to the days of early 19th-century trainmen spreading crushed limestone and gravel, laying railroad tie after railroad tie until the world linked itself together by steel tracks of innovation, industrialization, and connection between metropolis and landscape.

3. You’re comforted by background noises.

The chugging, the rattling, the rumbling, the hissing and screeching of brakes. It’s like falling asleep with the DVD menu on repeat. Sure, it may wake you up periodically, but it’ll lull you right back into your dreams.

4. You love getting your train legs.

Freely roaming a train beats the confinement of a car, bus, or plane any day. But if you’ve ever been jerked while trying to make it to your seat and find yourself in the lap of a stranger with a cup of cranberry juice sloshed everywhere, don’t worry. It’s happened to the best of us. You’ll soon sashay through aluminum gangways and sway with the train’s rhythmic bounce like it’s your second nature.

5. You’re totally unfazed by delays.

While some passenger trains crack 200 mph, there’s always that chance you’ll find yourself seven hours behind schedule somewhere in Nebraska due to train equipment malfunction.

At this point, there’s not much you can do but sip your whiskey and ginger ale from a plastic cup in the observation deck while discussing theories on the Georgia Guide Stones with a scruffy-faced man from Oklahoma City.

6. You relish in little flashes of life.

Trains go where cars can’t, allowing you to see kayakers gliding through the Colorado River with their paddles in the air, barefoot children startling Fleckvieh cattle in Bavaria, surfers waving from the foamy coast of Encinitas, a couple doused in rice outside a church in Iowa, or three teenagers camping in a field of red poppies in France, leaning out from their tent with messy hair to sway their arms back and forth.

Trains allow you to see these pieces of life that fasten the world together. Keep looking out your window.