Toy Train

 

Train! Train!

Cigarette packets and match boxes were my Lego bricks.

From childhood, I have been fascinated by trains and buses. A wooden red and yellow bus with "Kottayam" in Malayalam was my favourite toy.

I would suddenly feel thirsty on entering platform no 1 of Trichur railway station. My dad knew my thirst was induced by the stock at the shop at entrance - Coke and Fanta. Dad used to oblige me.

I used to make trains out of match boxes and cigarette packets. My dad was a smoker and that helped me build up my railway rolling stock faster than my friends. I used empty biscuit cartons and LG Asafoetida packs to building stations and overhead walk ways. Longer the train, tougher it was to make it travel in a straight line.

Out of curiosity, I used to assemble railway system well into my high school days whenever I could gather long slender empty packs for stations.

Nowadays all cigarette packets have flip open tops. Till the turn of the century, only premium brands had flip open tops. Scissors, Berkley, Bristol, Capstan, Charminar, Four Square etc were like sliding open match boxes. 

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