Every day, Matthew Mancil, a 12-year-old with autism, stands at the railroad tracks near his summer camp, waving to conductors and hoping they’ll whistle back. Last Thursday, something even more incredible
happened.
As a Union Pacific cargo train was nearing the crossing where the 8th-grader stood in Clinton, Utah, the conductor stopped the train, got out, and approached Matthew at the fence. He spoke with the boy for a
few minutes, then handed him a bunch of railroad gear.
It might have been the greatest thing that ever happened to the kid.

“Oh my goodness, he was so excited,” Matthew’s mom Rebecca Mancil tells Ellen’s Good News. “The camp counselors were so surprised too. They couldn’t believe someone would do that.”The conductor gave the young boy a vest, pair of Union Pacific gloves, a Union Pacific lantern, and some sunglasses. Then he waved and went on his way, and Matthew's whole world got brighter.
“As soon as Matthew got home, he showed us everything and he wanted to call his grandparents and tell them what happened,” Rebecca recalls. “Even throughout the weekend, he would go up to anybody and everybody, it didn’t matter if he knew them, and tell them about it.”
For as long as he’s been walking and talking, Matthew’s been obsessed with trains. He goes by the title “Train Conductor Matthew,” and according to KSL News, runs his own "commuter service" in his neighborhood, pulling kids around in a wagon and making train whistles. Fittingly, his bedroom wall is decked with a train mural that Rebecca painted, and the family has a membership to the local train museum, which Matthew frequents every chance he gets.
The oldest of five children, Matthew seems invigorated by his passion for trains. “Every day, as soon as I drop him off at camp, he runs over to the railroad tracks,” his mother says. “He’s a social kind of guy, but he is
autistic, so he’s not on his typical age level at all. The trains pull him out of his shell. Meeting anybody, that’s the first thing out of his mouth -- he wants to talk about trains.”
Now, Matthew's got quite the story to tell. While the family has yet to identity who the conductor was, they are sincerely grateful for the kind gesture.
“He has no idea what kind of impact that has made for Matthew,”
Rebecca remarks. “This is something he has been talking about, and probably will be talking about for a long time.”