A ride to get the theme tag

[springer]

 Thought I would try to pick up the Theme Tag but a shot of a train engine and a caboose car is a lot harder to get now a days. A train engine is easy. Just stand by some active rail lines and sooner or later a train engine pulling a train will come by. But even if you wait until the end of the train appears, chances are there will be no caboose.
Why is that? Well most trains are freight trains, carrying stuff not passengers, so the less personal on the train, the cheaper the train is to run. The caboose was the place all the extra train personal slept.
So my way of thinking was "I need a train museum". Thats when I remembered a ride DonR and I went on. We were just riding around and goofing of when we saw a small sigh in Calera that said something about a train museum, so we went to check it out. At that time there was not much to see. Just a lot of old rail cars, some sleepers, some dining cars, and some old steam locomotives. The older gentlemen who was there said the organization had some big plans for a nice park and a bunch of exhibits of the older steam locomotives and rail cars.
Some pictures to show y'all what I saw;













Now that picture is of old railroad crossing signs /\ and one really cool feature is that most of them work! Video \/

 

Now some more pictures of trains, rail cars, and some of the buildings that have some pretty good stuff in them \/









They also have train rides on the weekends that are pulled by a old steam locomotive. Another plus, if you ride to the museum, there are plenty of nice roads in that part of the state, cool old towns like Montevallo with a couple of decent places to eat, have a beer, or what ever.  ;)

[kdtrull]

I think that's a first...and pretty cool....a ride report from a simple trip to get a tag.  If there has been another one, I done forgot about it.  I likes.
Y'all have found some pretty cool sites in AL.  A little extra (background) info is a fantastic idea.

[jrou111]

That's what I'm talking about! Tag hunt inspires a ride report.  8)

[springer]

That's what I'm talking about! Tag hunt inspires a ride report.  8)

I think that's a first...and pretty cool....a ride report from a simple trip to get a tag.  If there has been another one, I done forgot about it.  I likes.
Y'all have found some pretty cool sites in AL.  A little extra (background) info is a fantastic idea.

Actually, if I remember right, that was the whole idea behind the tag game.
1. Give folks a reason to ride.
2 Inspire others to get out and ride.

One of the best rides I have ever went on was a ride to place or get a tag. Can not recall if we placed one, or picked it up, because the ride was so damn good.  All the way down to the southern part of the state to a small country church way out in the woods that had death mask gravestones. It was an awesome all day ride with paved roads, dirt roads, getting lost, checking out a guys Indians artifacts collection, finding a 1/2 rotted corpse of a dog, and not getting back home till it was well past dark-thirty.  ;)   
@jrou111  @KrisCook  I think y'all might remember that one too.  ;) ;)

I was going to go back down there but after a little checking, I found out if you want to go on the church grounds you now need to make an appointment. Vandals have damage some of those one of a kind gravestones.  :(

Alabama has a lot of those hidden gems and a motorcycle, any motorcycle, is a good way to go see them.  ;) 

[Guidedawg]

Yep, I read that report recently too!

I've written a few over the years, along with trips to ghost towns which was another excuse to get out and ride, but that was a few incarnations of the site ago.

Nevertheless, there's still plenty of challenges out there to get people to ride and document with either photos or a report such as *coff* National Register of Historical Places ;)