If there is something important to know about me it is that I love to travel by train.

It’s been something I have enjoyed since I was a child and my family visited the 1984 World’s Fair in New Orleans when I was almost four years old.

The things I really remember from that trip are the joy I got from having to kick the spot on the doorframe for it to open and that the conductor gave me a small, paper variation of the hat he wore. He also gave me a pint-sized bottle of water when we arrived in Louisiana.

As I got a bit older, we would take trips to Montgomery once a year to see historic sites and visit the places where the wheels of our state government turned.

Traveling by train got pretty bad just before I was old enough to learn how to drive a car.

The rail station in my hometown of Bay Minette  was used as a location in the movie “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” That station was moved across town and got turned into the Chamber of Commerce building in the late 1980s.

Not too many years after that AMTRAK shut down the line that stopped in Bay Minette. But they kept the small 15-foot, covered wooden platform and boarded up the one entry way that would allow you to step on board the train.

I wondered for many years when a line might be opened back up that would allow me to travel from this area back home on what I consider the most relaxing way to travel.

I got my answer last week at the Heart of Alabama Regional Planning meeting in Pell City when Principal Planner Steve Ostaseski happened to mention that AMTRAK was thinking about opening up the South Crescent line to its old routes. That is in addition to the $200,000 grant issued last month that will help fund a study to see whether high-speed rail is feasible in this state and others.

Now, we Southerners like our cars. They are part of our personalities for many of us.

But for myself, being able to sit back, kick up my feet and let someone else do the transporting is something I think we are overdue here in the South: one of the places that people travel many a long, pine covered mile to get from place to place.

When I’m driving in to work on Eastbound I-20 each morning, there are thousands of cars on the other side of the interstate. Just think if they could hop on a train that traveled down the middle of the interstate and be at work in 30 minutes. No need to stop for traffic. Make a stop in Moody, Irondale, Centerpoint and so on.

How long until it happens? I am a realist and I know that it won’t happen soon. Heck, the study to see if it’s do-able just got funded.

But I am hopeful that by the time my five-year-old son is driving age that he’ll be able to travel the route his old man used to take as a matter of practicality, not nostalgia.

My family travels by train at least once a year and I will admit that AMTRAK could use a bit of improvement. For many years the train system in this part of the country became the choice of transport for people without cars.

I am well aware that times have changed from the days when  the Crescent stopped in Pell City and Leeds, or train line ran through the Ashville-Ragland area.

There used to be private train companies that ran through central Alabama. Now it’s AMTRAK only.

AMTRAK sees that it can benefit from high-speed commuter trains as populations keep growing further from large city centers.

Like many things Southern, it might be too little too late. Look at I-20 leading into Birmingham in the morning or Highway 280 Sunday through Saturday.

Unless the price of gasoline skyrockets or if Japan and China ask our debts to be paid, high-speed train travel looks to be at least a decade away.

But I am a patient person and I can wait for high-speed train. Well, no I can’t. But, I’ll have to.

Until that time, I’ll enjoy whatever form AMTRAK is running currently.

Next month my family will take our annual trip to New Orleans. By train, of course.