So true. Passenger trains aren’t very common in the United States, so when I moved to Berlin in my early twenties, I DID get totally interested in trains for a while, though I don’t think it’s because I’m autistic.

It was just a new thing to explore.

However, over the course of my life, I have found myself really intensely focused on “special interests.” Some of my friends might want to replace “really intensely focused" with “obsessed,” but I doubt they connected those special interests to autism.

Sometimes I was lucky enough that a special interest would coincide with my professional life. For example when I arrived in Berlin as a US Air Force intelligence analyst, my special interest quickly became Soviet air defense assets in eastern Europe. I didn’t work 12 and 13 hour days because anybody was forcing me; I was obsessed with learning absolutely everything I could about what was going on and learning to analyze patterns in the data I had available to me.

I suppose to most of my peers, that made me a workaholic. But actually, it was part of my autism.

At another point in my life, my special interest was French, and I devoted some years learning to read, hear, and speak it fluently. I annoyed the hell out of my friends, because it was pretty much all I could ever talk about. But I doubt they ever connected it to autism.

Then I went through a period where my special interest was French pop music, and how special is that? I’m sure nobody ever connected that to my autism either, but by then I knew I was autistic, and I made the connection. That didn’t stop me from enjoying my interest, though.

Where I live, we don’t have trains. I couldn’t tell you where the nearest crossing is. But who knows, if I moved to part of the United States where passenger trains are common, it could be fun getting to know them. Lol