I grew up near train tracks. They run behind my childhood home and they used to present a tempting playground for me and my sister. We could walk almost a mile down the tracks both ways. Where the tracks reached a small creek, we used to walk along the tresses. We have also attempted to smash pennies on the rails, with very limited success.
But train tracks aren’t the safest place to be and my parents would often forbid us or ground us for even going near them. One year we stepped in a hornets nest and ran all the way home, welts rising up on our skin where we had been stung. Another time my friend decided to go bridge jumping off the tresses and ended up injuring her knee falling into shallow water. Luckily none of us were ever brave enough to try the stunts that Wells’ Ben McQueen did in his book, The Wrong Side of the Tracks: Books 1 and 2
