Nostalgia drags me back in time to our evening outings when, sitting on the little used railway siding lines behind our house with my little sister, brother and ayah, thrilled with excitement, we watched big and small trains with smoking engines thunder by.
Trains were the toys for boys then. One could purchase engines or entire train sets (spring wound or battery powered) from England, Germany and Japan at toy shops in Delhi’s Chandni Chowk where we dragged our parents for birthday or New Year presents. The love for train sets continued and resurfaced when three decades later my two-year-old son Daraius had a small battery powered train running around his birthday cake.
Above: Train themed Christmas decorations;
Bijan and Rusi Sorabji on train to San Jose
My father Ruttonshaw Sorabji’s railway genes continue in the family. When Daraius, then 30, settled in in his own house in California, he installed a huge tabletop railway system with five or six assorted miniature passenger and goods trains systems complete with a number of small town stations, tunnels, bridges, signals and automatic level crossing gates. This occupied most of the two-car garage. In the hallway leading upstairs, along the side wall were displayed rows of famous train and engine models from different countries.
And when train services came to our town of Campbell in California on October 1, 2005, guess who was amongst the few on the first train to San Jose? Ruttonshaw’s great-grandson Bijan, with his grandparents, my wife Villy and I. The attachment and love affair with the railways continues even on the other side of the earth and four generations later!