Saturday trip to the Quincy Shipyard to look at trains

This afternoon my son and I were looking for something to do while we were in Quincy, and of course his thoughts turned to trains. He wanted to find some kind of abandoned railway or something in the area, so I was googling around for something that wouldn't be too far away. We came upon some information about the Fore River Railroad near Braintree and decided to go there. 

I guess I didn't look at the information on that link very carefully because on our way to where the GPS was taking us, I was surprised to pass the Quincy Shipyard.

After driving around a little, I thought we might as well go into the shipyard because we had seen some tank cars on railroad tracks there, as well as a diesel engine or two. I'm always a little hesitant to poke my head into one of these kinds of industrial sites because I'm not sure I belong, but I didn't see any "no trespassing" signs.

We parked the car near a couple of cabooses (caboosi?) that were sitting on some tracks.

I saw a sign about the USS Salem, which sounded like it was a ship you could visit, so I aimed my son in that direction. As we walked to the ship, we passed some more tank cars.

My son studies a tank car with fascination.

I nudged him along until we got to the USS Salem, a Navy ship built in Quincy that is now a museum.

We went aboard, equipped with a guide, and wandered around the ship for as long as my son's attention span would allow (about 20 minutes, though I successfully kept him on board a bit longer). 

I had to explain "Kilroy" to my son, who thought this was a picture of Squidward. 

I took a lot of pictures of the ship and its guns, etc., but since my son was more interested in the trains, we'll turn back to those briefly. He was interested in this diesel engine, which he explained to me is a switcher (a kind of engine that stays in the rail yard and shunts cars around--also called a "shunter").

He enjoyed looking at the engine, but fortunately he didn't try to climb on it, since an employee came by to warn us not to climb on the trains.

The engine above is, I think, out of service (though I might be wrong). The engine below is, I'm pretty sure, still in service. My son is admiring it safely from afar.

So he got to see his trains, and I got to see my ship. A good way to spend the last afternoon of April.