You can tell how old a Canadian is by whether or not they remember waiting patiently for a train to rattle by just so they could have the eventual thrill of waving to the man (and it was always a man) in the bright red caboose–the exclamation point at the end of a long and rather boring sentence.

I remember.

My kids were born in the ’80s and ’90s when cabooses were all but gone from Canada’s train fleets, but that did not stop my son, Adam, from falling into a train fetish that began with Thomas the Tank Engine at age two and ended–well, it has never really ended–with a trip through the Rockies on the Rocky Mountaineer at age 14.

I wish I’d known about James LeFresne’s Train Station Inn in Tatamagouche, on Nova Scotia’s “forgotten” north shore, a little earlier in my parenting career. When I climbed up into the cupola in my own vintage caboose–CN Number 79815—earlier this spring, my first thought was, “I am bringing the grandchildren here.” (This is significant in that I don’t yet have any grandchildren, nor the prospect of some anytime soon.)

This is a great rest stop for train buffs of any age. The carefully restored cars–seven cabooses and a boxcar–are clean, spacious and can sleep up to four people comfortably. And the breakfast room in the century-old Tatamagouche train station (James bought it in 1974 when he was just 18 to save it from demolition) is a veritable shrine to Canadian train history. If you have a Thomas fan in tow–or you used to be one–this is the place to pause on the drive from Halifax to New Brunswick or Prince Edward Island.

You might have seen Tatamagouche recently on TV–star of CBC TV’s The Week the Women Went. The community dock and playground the men built for their absent women–just a 10-minute walk along the tracks from the Train Station Inn–is a great place for a summer picnic…