Full Steam Ahead!

We had a fantastic day this past Sunday.
Because W has Asperger's we are in touch with our local AS support group - Cloud 9.
Every so often they organise family outings - and on Sunday they had a train focussed one!

With 3 boys we have done trains to death - but this one included a trip on a real STEAM ENGINE!
That's an opportunity you really can't turn down, and besides T is still in the train phase.

So to make a real day out of it we caught the train from home to town and then met up with the group to catch another train to Silverstream where the steam engines were. Of course, nothing ever goes quite smoothly and so we only got a short ride in the train from home before we had to change to a bus to go to town. So poor T missed his favourite tunnels.

We got to Silverstream and walked a short distance to where we were met by a real, steamed up steam engine! We rode the engine to the Steam Museum and workshop where they restore the trains. We got more rides in the steam engine, toured the Museum and had a guided tour of the workshop where we could hear how they actually got hold of the trains and how they were working on them.

T just loved the steam - until he got a good face full! N really enjoyed the workings and W said he enjoyed but didn't really light up until he got an unexpected treat at the very end - he rode in the cab with the engineer and found out how they actually drive the trains. This wasn't a steam train but one of the ordinary commuter trains and so a concrete, real, everyday thing - just as he likes it!

He got the chance, a rare event, because one of the adults with the group knew the conductor on the train we were travelling home in. So the conductor asked if any of the kids would like to come up the front with the engineer. All the kids were pretty tired and W said all he heard was the word 'engineer' and stuck his hand up because he thought that sounded interesting! I've been working on volunteering in a reasonable time frame - instead of dithering over whether you want to or not, will something better come up, do I dare risk things etc - so it was a great chance to not only use that but also to show what cool things can come from making decisions.
W says it was almost as cool as the time he got a proper flight on the Rescue helicopter at the NICU Christmas Party.
W got to stay in the front all the way back to Wellington.

The boys were happy but tired when we got back and T finally fell asleep in the bus in the way home. This was the bus we had to get out of a short distance from home and transfer to a train. I was concerned T would wake and cry all the way home - but no, he was sooo tired he stayed asleep in my arms even as we got out of the bus, walked across an over bridge and got into a train! He woke coming into the station at home and was totally confused as to where he was!
It was very sweet - and to add to it the bus driver said he'd driven buses in our old suburb when I'd caught buses often and he remembered W sleeping on the bus like that!

But despite eating very little T had lasted well through a long and fairly demanding day, N had kept his behaviour together and after his trip in the front of the train W was aglow! It was a great day - toot toot!