BRUNSWICK — Patty Sparks was the poster child of train travel in Brunswick.

A photo of Sparks at age 5 made nearly every trip of the former Boston and Maine Railroad, representing Brunswick.

“My picture used to be right here,” Sparks said, holding up the grainy scanned image on her iPhone just below the overhead compartments of an Amtrak Downeaster train that rolled into Brunswick for a special visit Monday morning.

The train’s visit marked the completion of the Brunswick Station train platform and gave residents a preview of the regular rail service scheduled to start in November from Boston to Brunswick via Freeport.

“I cannot wait to do this again,” Sparks said, walking through the aisle of the Downeaster train.

It was Sparks’ grandmother who first brought her aboard. Despite admonitions against looking at the train’s framed picture of the young Sparks and her fox terrier, Trixie — “That’s vanity!” her grandmother would warn — her memories are all positive. Sparks hopes to bring her granddaughter aboard this fall.

That excitement about riding trains is not uncommon, according to Joseph Szabo, administrator of the Federal Railroad Administration.

Amid consistent debates about funding for Amtrak and new rail projects, Szabo told The Times Record that the public is “far ahead” of federal political officials in support of passenger rail.

“I see this in community after community across the country,” Szabo said.

For transportation buffs, there’s a lot to get excited about.

“Two sets of train tracks can carry as many people in an hour as 16 lanes of (car) traffic,” Szabo said on the Brunswick Station platform Monday.

Amtrak ridership increased by 50 percent during the past decade, Szabo said; on lines from Chicago to St. Louis, ridership quadrupled; out of Boston, ridership doubled in 2011 against numbers from 2005.

Local, state and federal officials touted the economic benefits of the train’s arrival in speeches at the Brunswick platform Monday.

The Amtrak Downeaster’s extension into Brunswick will allow it to connect with the Maine Eastern Railroad, which runs from Brunswick to Rockland.

Carollann Ouellette, director of Maine’s Office of Tourism, said that connection will be “a significant contribution to Maine tourism,” building on the state’s history of train travel.

“Railroads are an important part of Maine’s past and they will be an important part of its future,” Ouellette said.

But there were other reasons to be excited, too.

For Bob Allen, a Topsham resident and volunteer with the Wiscasset,

Waterville and Farmington Railway Museum, the train’s arrival marked a connection to the past.

Allen was standing near the same tracks in 1954 when he took photos of the last steam locomotive — No. 470 — leaving out of Brunswick and out of the state after a trip from Portland to Bangor and back.

On Monday, Allen waited trackside on Union Street with a VHS camcorder in hand, alongside a group of fellow rail enthusiasts at the front lines for the train’s arrival.

Down the railroad platform, a host of cameras awaited a chance to capture the Downeaster’s maiden voyage to Brunswick, and officials from the state’s Department of Transportation, the Northern New England Passenger Rail Authority (NNEPRA) board and the Brunswick Town Council awaited the train’s arrival.

For regular service, the wait could be as long as November. NNEPRA executive director Patricia Quinn said that an official start date has not yet been set and will depend on the speed of summer construction work.

Whenever it arrives, Szabo said the train line’s expansion will be part of a growing trend.

“The future is very bright for passenger rail,” Szabo said. “It’s clearly what the public wants.”

dfishell@timesrecord.com