Back in the day, we'd make frequent trips with the family from our home in Austin to our grandmother's house in Lubbock. One time, we were greeted with a blast from the horn from every train that passed us.

Years later, we kids realized that, by blind chance, every train we passed was approaching a railroad crossing at the time, and they were required to sound their horn when they were coming up to a crossing. But when we were young, it seemed obvious that all the engineers recognized our car and were blowing the horn to say hello to us.

It was very exciting to know that all the engineers and conductors were so friendly.