Every day I drive across the University Railway tracks four times, and every day I think about the "Whooper" passenger train, known for its distinctive whistle, that last carried people to Carrboro's station in 1938. Then I'd wonder if this 12-mile short-line railroad would ever see passenger traffic again, instead of just a few coal cars chugging twice-a-week down to the UNC steam plant. Perhaps when oil reaches $200 a barrel -- or will we just switch then to electric cars?

Since my train fantasy began I've learned that an express bus between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill would likely make better time than a train could following the curvaceous old route from east of Hillsborough where it meets the N.C. Railroad main line. I promptly looked up the long-range transportation plan for our region and saw railroad tracks lacing the Triangle by 2035, but NOT between Hillsborough and Chapel Hill or Carrboro. Regional transportation planner Ellen Beckmann also told me that using the University Railway doesn't meet the long range transportation plan's requirement for fiscal balance. Fantasies don't die easy though..

To put some more juice into this one and have a good excuse for a hike, I google-mapped the rail line, which dates back to 1891, and determined that a walk along the tracks would be just the thing -- from where they first cross University Station Road back toward their intersection Millhouse Road. Saddling up Bonnie the faithful dog and calling an eager hiking companion were all the preparations needed. Oh yeah, and a phone call to the UNC Coal Plant to determine if the coal train ran Saturdays -- they told me it didn't. So my biped friend Tom, Bonnie and I parked my Corolla near the intersection of University Station Road and University Railway and headed on foot back toward Chapel Hill.

The trek was a window into time past. Old train tracks through the woods go there. We quickly lost sight of any roads or houses and saw only the single set of tracks and box turtles, living and dead. Apparently this sunny slash through the woods is a great fall warming spot for these cold-blooded creatures. Some were just shell and bone remains while others, quite alive, stretched out their sinuous clawed feet seeking purchase on the next cross tie, headed only they knew where.

The distance between cross ties does not make for easy walking; somehow the spacing doesn't quite match the stride of a 6-foot man. Every third tie we had to alter our stride, staying conscious of the path, especially when traversing a 30-foot ravine on the trestle over New Hope Creek. Bonnie the dog was as nervous as we were looking down at the dark water with rocks poking out.

Always looking down, thinking how those splintered graying creosoted ties under rusty rails could bear even the small coal trains' loads. Wornout ties were just discarded off to the side of the rail bed, like so many broken bones replaced rather than mended. No use to anyone anymore and not able to be burned or recycled. We just hoped they didn't leach too much of their residual chemical contents into the nearby waters.

After a time, we came upon a few houses backed up to the rail line; a barking beagle, a roosting hawk and a few beehives were the only signs of life, no humans around. There was a car graveyard whose newest wreck was a 1950s Ford wagon. While we heard road noise, we saw no cars or roads. After an hour and a half we heard cars thumping across the tracks at Blackwood Station. There's been no such station for no such train in 70 years now, just that vestigial name.

We came suddenly out of the woods around a curve toward N.C. 86 at Mount Sinai and smelled the barbecue. There was Allen and Sons - where lunch consisted of a barbeque sandwich and homemade sweet potato pie whose crust was burnt just right.

The trek though the past was over too soon. Following the track south, we soon crossed between the massive pillars that uphold I-40 and threaded our way past the Emerson Waldorf school's ballfields and the Town of Chapel Hill's Public Works Operations Center. I continued to contemplate a commuter train one day making its way from a revived University Station south through perhaps a village center at the old Blackwood Station, stopping at Carolina North, then continuing on to Carrboro where the original "Station" still stands, albeit as a bar now. From there, crossing Main Street, bypassing the coal plant and making its way somehow to UNC campus. Underground possibly, though the planners say it's too pricey. Then it would be downhill to connect with the transit lines slated to run past Meadowmont, destined for Durham, RTP and Raleigh.

In this election season, I should have asked our eager local office seekers is this too fiscally unbalanced or would we rather settle for another 20,000 cars and buses up and down Martin Luther King Boulevard each day to carry workers to town from elsewhere?