Welcome to the Just Get On Board website!
Growing up, I was obsessed with trains, hockey and baseball.
I went to my first hockey game at a few weeks old, played baseball for over 10 years and got my first train set on Christmas when I was in elementary school. As I got older, hockey and baseball continued to play significant roles in my life – both for work and for recreation – but trains became an afterthought and fell to the wayside. Trains that once ran around a tiny 8’x4′ layout in the basement sat still, gathered dust, were listed on eBay and sold.
Then came 2020.
While navigating that difficult year, I stumbled across countless YouTube channels of travel vloggers documenting these unforgettable trips all over the world. The ones that mainly drew my unwavering attention were experienced from the seat of a train. The views, the food, the drinks, the atmosphere, all of it was captivating.
Channels like DownieLive, Simply Railway, Jeb Brooks, SuperAlbs and many others got me hooked on trains again. What’s more, they all genuinely enjoyed what they did in their videos.
If they can do it, why can’t I?
I had novice experience shooting and editing video from my time as an undergrad at Michigan State University (Go Green!) and later from working for MLB Network, Disney Streaming Services and MLB Advanced Media.
So, I gave it a shot.
I caught an ad to open an Amtrak Guest Rewards credit card account that came with a significant bonus points offer and before I knew it, I was booking my first bona fide Amtrak trip.
It wouldn’t be the first lengthy train trip, though. When I was 9 years old, my family and I took a trip to Disney World. To get down there, my parents booked a trip on the Silver Star from Newark to Orlando.
Many years later, during one of my holiday breaks in college, I took the Capitol Limited home from Chicago to New Jersey via Washington D.C.. I hopped on a bus in East Lansing to get to Battle Creek before boarding the Wolverine to Chicago. Several hours later, I was on one of the more scenic rides in the eastern United States.
Waking up paralleling a river in the middle of the snow-covered Allegheny Mountains in south-central Pennsylvania and western Maryland was an experience that still plays out in my mind from time to time.
I wanted that feeling again, so I called my college roomates and proposed a baseball trip. They’re baseball nuts like I am, so we swung for the fences. I proposed stops in Pittsburgh, Chicago, Kansas City, St. Louis and Milwaukee for baseball games, nine in all. We’d get to each place by train.
After a week of baseball, beers and blowing through the midwest, I kept my trip going by venturing out to California on the Southwest Chief before swinging over to New Orleans on the Sunset Limited.
I fell in love with this old-school mode of transportation. Along the way, I made sure to have a GoPro attached to the window to document most of what I was seeing from the comfort of my seat.
That leads me to Just Get On Board today.
Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Land of Hope And Dreams’ is one of my all-time favorite songs. Good luck not saying ‘This train’ whenever you see one after jamming out to it. It undoubtedly shares some inspiration from ‘People Get Ready’ by The Impressions.
The overarching theme of both songs, in my opinion, is to not let life pass you by. A train is the stand-in for life in these pieces and all you need to do is get on board.
So, thank you for coming across my channel and my site.
I hope you can enjoy the views in the photos and videos as much as I have and I hope this might inspire you to get out and experience the world yourself from the comfort of a seat on a train.
All the best,
Brian
Just Get On Board 