Dumbledore on Trains
Call it what you will: an old man's guilty pleasure, an unusual and curious hobby or a sign of approaching senility, but Headmaster Dumbledore loved his trains very much. It was at his insistence that all students boarded at King's Cross every September and arrived there again at the end of the school year. Whilst he told the board of governors (in a very serious and convincing head-masterly voice) that this scheme would not only ease the administrative difficulties of getting the student body to Scotland, it would also allow for much needed social interaction and conversation.
It also allowed him to drive the Express twice every year.
If you asked Minerva McGonagal, officiator of his diary when she was not busy being Deputy Headmistress of a large boarding school, what his most important dates are in a year, she shall smiled a strained smile and say of course that is the quasi-annual ICW conventions that he considers his greatest priority.
This is such a blatant lie points have been known to be automatically deducted from Gryffindor House and no one can ever quite figure out why. The truth was and is that Dumbledore treasured his train time the most. His summer outing to Sodor came in at a close second, with whatever Elton John concerts were on that year after that. In truth, the greatest wizard of the century liked nothing more than the giant red engine, with its great whooshing steam and great mechanical parts from an age long past.
It may have been that many a summer moon ago a young Albus Dumbledore had a fancy of becoming a train driver himself. Unfortunately, magic being what it was, and he being whom he was, and Grindelwald being whom he was, that this dream was soon wrapped up, shelved and left to cough out its lungs in the dusty corner of the mind. Alas, for the world of transportation lost a great possible defender...although saying that, had Dumbledore not been a wizard there wouldn't be much of a world at all, never mind one for steam trains and sherbet lemons.
Still the fond hobby remained forever in his heart and now in his twilight years had Dumbledore finally begun to live both his boyhood dreams: To be the greatest wizard in the world, and a train driver!