How my father stopped trains for us

When I was small, each spring and autumn we used to visit frequently and each summer we used to move to our dacha, at the far end of Bakuvian countryside. It was situated next to a railway, but the nearest stations were very far away, and it took painstaking walking to reach the nearest (Albalılıq, or former Vishnevka) and it was almost impossible to reach the other (Maştağa) as we didn’t have a car, and the railway was the only transport there. So it happened very frequently that during our walk to the station, we encountered a train which already left for the next one. The trains traveled with great time intervals, and missing the one meant for us to wait the next for hours.

But my father had a very original solution to this: when we were seeing that train was already on its way to Maştağa my father was just stepping onto the railway and by his hands were signalling “emergency stop” to the train (as a former railway worker, of course he knows the “language” of railways). The trains often stopped, if not always, just in the middle of their route and picked us up and then my father gave the engine-drivers some small amount of money as a reward for this service. Years passed, we abandoned our dacha, then sold its ruins for a symbolic price, and a new station was built near it, but even today I remember that signal which stopped all trains for us anywhere and anytime.