My Bapa loved trains.

With Fritz the Dad and both grandpas gone and no Dad at my house, I wondered what I'd write about on this Father's Day Sunday.

Then Tuesday happened, and I knew.

My Bapa loved trains. Never worked on one, never rode one much, but was just fascinated with them. He had a model set in the basement and when we were little, he'd take us down there to see it. As we got older, it was usually "put up" when we got there, probably so my rough-and-tumble "little brother" wouldn't mess with it.

When we moved to Laramie, Bapa was thrilled that it was right on the UP line.

There were some UP employees who thought the world of Fritz the Dad, and they soon were inviting Bapa down to the yard to watch what was going on.

Then, they started taking him on "rides," sometimes all the way through the mountains and back.

After he became ill and we lived closer to downtown on Ivinson Avenue, he'd often walk several blocks to the train station and sometimes we wouldn't know where he'd gone. But he always made his way back, full of stories of what he'd seen and who he'd talked to.

On one of our many "adventures" around wonderful Wyoming with them along, Bapa discovered Hanna and the trains there. It was paradise for him.

So much so in fact that when he died in July 1982, not having been to Wyoming for more than a decade, my Nana wanted memorials for him to be made to the Catholic church in Hanna.

So on Tuesday, I rode a Burlington Northern Santa Fe train from Casper to Bucknum and back. It was an event for Boys & Girls Club members and I tagged along.

And it was wonderful.

I imagined really traveling that way, curling up with a book as the world passed by outside. I imagined having Dani as the bartender, asking every couple of minutes if she could bring me anything. They even had diet Coke in those little squatty cans. They also had peanut M&M's and mixed nuts on every table in the Club Lounge.

Even the "coach" cars were way schnitzier than I remembered from our one UP trip from Laramie to Detroit in the 1960s.

The car I was in was a double-decker, with some skinny, circular steps up to a balcony-type seating area, overlooking both the passengers below and the green pasture land outside.

At our linen-tableclothed, sit-down luncheon in the dining car, this terrific gal suggested to her escort that the train would be a perfect location for her upcoming birthday bash.

Since I know without a doubt that I will be a wedding planner in my next life, she and I spent the next while planning things down to the detail - one car for dancing, one car for drinking, one car for dining.

Neither how much the bill would be nor who might pay it was of any consequence to us.

So here's to Bapa, ridin' the celestial rails to somewhere fun. And here's to all of our grandpas and Dads on this day. We miss you more than you'll ever know.

Community News editor Sally Ann Shurmur can be reached at (307) 266-0520; sallyann.shurmur@casperstartribune.net or read her online at www.casperstartribune.net/dishin