All Aboard

Great thread, Rani! I've gotta agree with you about the genetic thing with trains. My dad was an Engineer for Union Pacific Railroad so I know I inherited a love of all things railroad from him. Unfortunately, he passed way too young at 44 years of age when I was only 7 years old. But the love of trains was already set at my young age. Both of my kids also have it today.
I still have the Lionel set I got for Christmas shortly after I turned 3 - yeah, sure it was for me! LOL. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad setting up train and us running it around the tracks. I've had a train around the Christmas tree almost every year.
To this day, I enjoy watching the trains go by whenever I get stopped at a road crossing.
And I love to travel by train. I did a lot of train travel when I was younger since one of the benefits of him working for Union Pacific was the entire family could travel for free aboard Union Pacific passenger trains. We still had our UP passes after he died so it was always inexpensive to travel to see relatives in other states. Two consecutive summers my mom and I traveled cross-country from SoCal to the east coast. The first summer we traveled east across the US, up the east coast to Canada, west across Canada and down the west coast back home. The following summer we reversed the route. Great memories.
Today's train travel is still fun but not nearly as elegant as it was back in late '50s and early '60s. If you ever get a chance I highly recommend traveling up the west coast from Los Angeles to Seattle on the Coast Starlight. I did this about 10 years ago and it was great!