YOU could say Eugene Bostick’s golden years have gone to the dogs, but he couldn’t be happier about it.

    Bostick, a retired Union Pacific railroad employee living on a farm in Fort Worth, Texas, the U.S., with his wife and brother, has built a unique train to transport stray dogs he has rescued over the years.

    The cars in Bostick’s makeshift locomotive are made of blue 55-gallon fiberglass barrels mounted on wheels and hooked up to a John Deer riding lawnmower.

    At least once a week, Bostick takes his pups down to a local watering hole, around some quiet streets or into the woods so they can experience the world.

    “Whenever they hear me hooking the tractor up to it, man, they get so excited,” he said. “They all come running and jump in on their own. They’re ready to go.”

    “Oh, they just love it,” Corky Bostick, Euegne’s 87-year-old brother told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “Every time he takes the covers off, they start jumping and barking, ready for the ride.”

    Before building the train for his furry friends about 15 years ago, Bostick told NBC DFW he had been transporting them in a trailer hooked up to a tractor, but as more and more strays began showing up on his doorstop, he realized there was no enough room in the camper for everyone.

    The 80-year-old got the idea to put together a proper train after seeing a friend haul rocks in barrels connected to a tractor, he said.

    “We live down on a dead-end street, where me and my brother have a horse barn,” Bostick said “People sometimes come by and dump dogs out here, leaving them to starve. So, we started feeding them, letting them in, taking them to the vet to get them spayed and neutered. We made a place for them to live.

    “One day I was out and I seen this guy with a tractor who attached these carts to pull rocks. I thought, ‘Dang, that would do for a dog train.’ I’m a pretty good welder, so I took these plastic barrels with holes cut in them, and put wheels under them and tied them together.”

    As a veteran railroad man, Bostick takes his conductor duties seriously: each car is numbered and has assigned seating for all of his fluffy passengers.

    To make the pups, some of which are long in the tooth, feel more comfortable on the weekly outings, Bostick has equipped each train compartment with pillows.

    There is also a wooden ramp available to help those pooches that are having trouble boarding the train.

    (SD-Agencies)