The northeast Texas towns of Paris and Mount Pleasant are only about 49 miles apart, but they were once connected by a shortline railroad, named, appropriately enough, the Paris and Mt. Pleasant RR. As far as I know, it never acquired Diesel power, and its passenger service had vanished probably not long after I was born. However, steam-powered freights still plied the rails a couple of times a week in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Thanks probably to some personal friendships, my father arranged for him and me to ride one of those freights which were, by the way, overnight experiences. We rode from Paris in the cab of the steamer, and my fading youthful recollections can be summarized as noisy, bouncy, hot, and steamy wet! After a midnight breakfast at an all-night diner in Mt. Pleasant, we began the return trip in the freight caboose in whose cupola I soon fell fast asleep. I must have been five or six years old, and my father did not have a camera, so these fading memories are all the souvenirs left to me, but, yes, I have slept on a train -- and I didn't even have a ticket!
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