Bertie Ahern, like most others, enjoyed playing with trains when he was a boy. Yesterday he got the chance to drive one. However, it was not just any train.
It was a shiny new spotless model, the pride of New Delhi's metro system.
Shown around the Central Secretariat station in the heart of the Indian capital, Mr Ahern's desire to have a similar system in Dublin was clear for all to see.
The three-line network, construction of which began in 1998, currently stretches for 54km and is be extended in the future.
Unlike major projects at home, the network has been built on budget and ahead of time.
More than half of the funding for it came from a low-interest Japanese loan.
Its architect, the enthusiastic 73-year-old Elattuvalapil Sreedhran, told Mr Ahern: "We have very good discussions with the people about the routes. Sometimes they have good ideas."
In the end, however, Delhi Metro makes the final call.
"I must tell Bord Pleanála that when I get home," Mr Ahern said jokingly.
Still sporting a limp following the recurrence of a jogging injury, Mr Ahern walked through the station and down to one of the platforms.
The Delhi lines, which carry 1½ million passengers each day, operate between 6am and 10.30pm, with tickets costing between 12 and 42 cent.
On board one of the trains, Mr Ahern happily took the wheel, watched over by Micheál Martin and Mary Hanafin.
Much of the rest of the network is to be built on elevated lines running above existing roads - for one-third of the cost of underground track.
Deeming the overhead lines "aesthetically and environmentally pleasing", Mr Ahern mused about the difficulties of copying the model in Dublin. "I can just imagine what people would say if I tried to run one of these lines up to Drumcondra, though I'd like to," he told The Irish Times.
So far, the Delhi Metro has cut pollution levels and car accidents by 30 per cent. It saves two million man-hours every day and has enabled car speeds to increase by 4km an hour.
Earlier, Mr Ahern travelled to the "jewel in the crown of the Christian Brothers in India", St Columba's School.
Hundreds of green-jacketed boys stood in formation on the school sports pitch to welcome him, singing Amhrán na bhFiann better than would be managed in most Irish schools.
Members of the Irish religious orders still left in India - a number that is rapidly dwindling - had travelled from afar to greet the Taoiseach.
Included in the gathering was Br John Gerard Murray, who lives in Nainital in the foothills of the Himalayas.
"You are a credit to yourselves, to your orders and to your country, and we are immensely proud of what you do and what you have done," Mr Ahern told them.
Christian Brothers' "old boy" Gurpreet Singh Bindra said the Irish brothers and nuns had influenced hundreds of thousands of students.
"Forty years ago, I was taught by Br McCann, a tough disciplinarian but a compassionate and dedicated man," he said with emotion.
In the audience, the self-same Brother Terry McCann, who hails from Newcastlewest, Co Limerick, smiled and gently nodded, a life's work in his beloved land recognised by his country's leader.
