Kids at Work Day

Thursday, April 26 was the national Take Our Daughters and Sons To Work Day. Being half of the planning team at the RTA and the one with the kids, I had to make it as super as last year's awesome CTA adventure. Metra agreed to give us access to a conductor at the train station, some security personnel at Union Station, and their training simulator! Here, we haven't even left our home station yet and the boys were already totally excited about their day.

 

We went to my office and met up with all the other kids, then headed back to Union Station to meet with the conductor and tour a train and engineer cabin. Then a few people from the security team talked with us and let the kids pet the explosive-detecting dog, Igor, who is named after a 9/11 victim. Not sure who had a better time, the kids or the dog.

 

Next, the little kids went to Metra's headquarters to try out the training simulators while the older ones went on a scavenger hunt at Union Station. As might be expected, Jason went full throttle and had the horn blasting the whole time. He missed every station. The guys running the simulator tried to faze Jase with a big thunderstorm and then some fog, but he never let go of the horn or slowed down. 

Jack did better and attempted to use different accelerating and decelerating strategies, although I don't think he made any of the station platforms either. But at least he saw them. I was the only adult to try the simulator, and now that I think of it, I don't think I made stops at any of the station platforms, either.

After a picnic lunch in the Great Hall, we went back to work. I set the boys up at a free desk area so Jack could get some of his homework done. He needed to finish up his Young Authors book (to be blogged about later this week). Their friend Milan joined them at the work station.

After everyone came back from lunch we had a few of the RTA senior staff talk with the kids about what we do and how it all fits in with CTA, Metra, and Pace. After that, I had arranged for an Operation Lifesaver representative come and talk with the kids about railroad safety. To finish out the day, the kids sat with their parents for an hour or so. They kids all seemed to have a pretty good time and what can I say, it was pretty easy to plan -- kids love trains. We'll have to see what we can come up with for next year...