Wish I had seen that

[cnwfan51]

    Ok folks a while back I asked youall if you had thought you had been born in the worng era, And got an interesting bunch of responses, So here we go again.   Is there one place that now is a shell of  its former self would you have liked to see in its heyday?.    I would have like to see Boone when it was a major terminal. with the towers and roundhouse and such   Hope to here from all of you Larry

[henry6]

I grew up in the NYC area in the mid 40's to 60's...as it all wound down...trolley cars, subways, steam, electric and diesel railroads, coal and banana's by the boat load, and people able to go just about anywhere...so it would be nice to see how things were before the downslide..I'll include all of North Jersey, Connecticut, and Long Island and the counties north of New York City in this dreamworld.

AHH! Bellows Falls, White River Jct,. for that matter just about any junciton in New England had to have been a railfan's dream through WWII!

Binghamton, NY with the Erie, DL&W, D&H, and LV; Ansco factories in full uperation, Endicott Johnson shoes the soul and sole of the Triple Cities, and IBM coming on through the sweet smell of freshly wrapped cigars!

Philadelphia...a train, trolley, or subway to just about anywhere and every direction!  Further west in the Keyston State, Harrisburg with all its flurries of activity of two railroads and multi yarrds; Altoona had the works and led up the hill to Horseshoe Curve where you could see trains four abreast followed by Cresson and on to Pittsburgh.

Syracuse NY had to have been a really fun place with the DL&W following the widespread main and branch lines of NYC around town and the Empire State...plus the trolley/interurban lines. Then there was Rochester, Buffalo and.... 

And those are just a few of the ghost towns I have visited in the last 30 or so years...I would have to say any major or minor rail center had to be a fascinating place for a railfan

[espeefoamer]

I barely missed steam.I saw steam engines when I was a baby,but it was gone before I was old enough to remember.I grew up along the UP main line outside of L.A. This line unfortunately dieselized early.If steam had lasted as long on the Main line out of L.A. as it did on Sherman Hill I would have have remembered seeing steam engines.There is some consolation in that I rember seeing the Pacific Electric cars in Long Beach as this line ran into April 1961.

[BHirschi]

There are two places I would have liked to have seen in their heydey, and a third I did see but didn't fully appreciate until it was long gone. More on that in a minute.

First, I would have loved to have visited Silver Springs, Florida (just east of my home in Ocala) at the turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries. Back then, steam boats of the Hart Line chugged down the St. John's River from Jacksonville and into the Ocklawaha at Palatka before making their way down to the Silver River and up the run into Silver Springs, which was already becoming a tourist attraction. There, they docked right behind the old two-story depot of the Florida Central & Peninsular Railway, where they traded passengers and cargo with the trains which called at the front side of the station. That would have been quite a sight to see.

Second, it would have been awesome to hang out at the platform at Jacksonville Union Terminal in its heyday -- just before and just after World War II. ACL R-1 Northerns and loads of E-Units in Southern green and gold, Atlantic Coast Line purple and silver, Seaboard's "citrus" scheme and Florida East Coast's red and yellow. And to add to all the color, JUT's own blue and orange switchers (even a couple of steam switchers were painted in those colors, so I've heard). Oh, for a time machine -- can you imagine what high-quality digital video and hi-res color digital stills of all that stuff would be worth?

And finally, there's the place I actually did see in its heydey -- or at least, at the end of its heydey -- but didn't recognize it for the unique and endangered place that it was: Seaboard Coast Line's ex-ACL trackage through Ocala in the late 1960s and early 1970s. It was a winding route from Jacksonville to St. Petersburg which crossed the SCL's "S Line" (former Seaboard trackage from Jacksonville to Lakeland) in three places -- Baldwin, Ocala and St. Catherine. Along the way, it doubled back on itself through the sharp wye at Burnett's Lake, struck out across Payne's Prairie, hugged the shores of Orange Lake north of Ocala and Lake Weir south of it, ran down the middle of Osceola Avenue in Ocala, did some more street running in Tarpon Springs, Clearwater and St. Pete, and -- if maps are to be believed -- even ran right along the shore of the Intracoastal Waterway between Tarpon Springs and Clearwater. I vaguely remember those bumblebee E-Units cruising through town, but I never rode the trains that used that line (the South Wind and City of Miami). I was only 10 when Amtrak took over passenger trains and elimated passenger service on the old ACL trackage. I wish I would have taken that trip from Jacksonville to St. Pete!

Today, only three parts of the line still exist -- a section from downtown Jacksonville to just short of Baldwin, a section from just north of Burnett's Lake to the north end of Gainesville, and our piece in Ocala from Lowell to Silver Springs Shores. It's used by the Florida Northern short line.

The hubris of childhood comes in not realizing that the world around us changes; that the things we see every day and take for granted won't always be there. There's so much I grew up with in Ocala and Central Florida that's long gone, and how I wish I had it all back! And of all the things I miss, what I wouldn't give for a trip on the old SCL City or the Wind.

I was a little older and more appreciative, and did get a chance to railfan and photograph the SCL before it was absorbed into the mammoth CSX. But I still miss that old "bumblebee" scheme, GP-7s and GP-30s, the ever-present U-Boats, the Clinchfield, Frisco, L&N, Chessie and RF&P "foreign power" that often found its way onto our tracks, and the cherished occasional glimpse of SCL's red, white and blue "Spirit of '76" U36B.

I feel sorry for kids growing up today. A moment of silence, please, for all our fallen flags. May they live forever in our photographs, memories and scale model layouts!

Bill

[jeffhergert]

I would've liked to see the Milwaukee Road terminal in Perry, Iowa.  It wouldn't even have to have been in it's heyday, the late 1960s/early 1970s would do.  By the time I finally got out to Perry, much of the yard had been removed and the remainer used for storage of cars.  Now even that is all gone now.  At least I can say I was able to switch cars there for the UP before it was completely abandoned.

Another terminal that is gone that I wished I had seen was the Rock Island at Eldon, Iowa.  The first time I was able to get there, it was all gone.  

The list could go on.

Jeff  

[daveklepper]

I would have loved to have ridden the Milwaukee's Pacific extension with the Olympian Hiawatha hauled by bipolars or Little Joes under wire.  Loved othave ridden from Cincinnati to Detroit or visa versa via interurban on the Cincinnati and Lake Erie.  Or ridden the Indiana railroad Fort Wayne-Indianapolis-Terre-Haute or Louisville.  Or the Rio Grande Southern, steam or Gallopin' Goose. 

 But I am thankful for the times I rode behind 844, the Q's O-1 and O-4, the Denver Zephyr, the Super Chief, the 20th Century, the Broadway, and the Panama, when they were still truly great trains,  And the California Zephyr and the City of Los Angeles, even when signs of decline showed.   And to have ridded wooden gate elevated cars in Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx, and Chicago.   The North Shore, what we wouldn't give tobring it back.   West Penn in the coke region.  The Fineview trolley line in Pittsburgh and Cabin John in Washington, DC.  The Liberty Bell Limited.  The Suncook Valley mixed train with steam at age 13.  Cab ride, GG-1, New Haven Penn Station.   Cab of a South Africa 4-8-0 steamer switching the Blue Train in Praetoria.   Front vestibule of the Ratian's international interurban from St. Moritz to Tirano, Italy.  Cannot really complain. 

[carnej1]

Living in Rhode Island very near the Northeast Corridor I have often daydreamed about crack New Haven passenger trains flying by with semi-streamlined I-5 Hudsons on the point...

[wjstix]

I was watching some home video I shot last fall of UP 3985 leaving downtown St.Paul MN and going past the old Union depot, which is now used for storage by the adjacent US Post Office. Seeing all the steam and smoke from across the Mississippi River (and the very loud whistle!) I couldn't help but think what it was like when the depot was new in the early 20's when you could see 2-300 trains a day (both passenger and freight) going by or into the depot.

Good news is that the depot will quite likely be renovated to be used in conjunction with the Mpls-St Paul extension of the light rail system. If so, it will have LRV access on one side of the depot, and 'heavy' commuter trains (and possibly Amtrak) on the other side.

[Buildy]

 Enola PA during WII would work for me. With roaming rights to Rockville Bridge.

[tomikawaTT]

Granted, the location isn't in the US, but the locos were Baldwins:

I would have loved to have seen the Kiso Forest Railway before the 0-4-2 rear-tank locos were retired.  By the time I visited the area in 1964, the operation was running a variety of diesel 'critters.'  That lasted until 1975, when trucks finally took over from the 30 inch gauge.

There is one Kiso loco, much modified and 'Americanized,' in the California Railway Museum collection.

Chuck

[aricat]

That place is Kelly Lake Minnesota, when Mallets ruled. My wife's maternal Grandfather was a GN hogger out of Kelly Lake.He would give give her rides in the cab of Mallets when she was a little child.Her childhood memories of GN steam was they shook the house. I wish I had known her then.

[Trainmaster.Curt]

If there was one line i wish i could've seen when it was in it's glory days, it would've been the Miami subdivision of the Canadian National Railway, back in the late 1950's early 60's when green and gold GMD1's trundled down the 60lb light branchline. I would've loved to been at Margaret, Manitoba when they dropped off empty 40' boxcars for the wooden grain elevators. And i would've loved to wait by Miami station for the local passenger train. At least we still have the Prairie Dog Central Railway where the past IS present.

[dabug]

Winton Place (Cincinnati).  Winton Place was a suburban stop 5 miles north of Cincinnati Union Terminal.  Four railroads operated passenger trains through there over a double-track line owned by the B&O.  Boarded and de-boarded from trains there numerous times in the 1950s and ‘60s, on trips to or from Cincinnati, but in those days was too young in years and means to railfan the place.   Picture this: all passenger trains of the PRR and N&W to and from Cincinnati went through Winton Place; all NYC Cincinnati passenger trains, except their Chicago trains, went through Winton Place; and all B&O passenger trains operating north or east of Cincinnati went through Winton Place.  I have a falling-apart Official Guide from 1951 that indicates 46 passenger trains of the four roads served Winton Place at that time.  All but two stopped there.  A small frame station sat on the west side of the tracks, while a funky little 3-sided shelter sat opposite it on the east side of the tracks.  To further enhance the scene, all this activity was at street level, and the several street crossings in the area were all protected by watchmen towers well into the ‘50s, perhaps even into the ‘60s. Alas, after Amtrak decimated what few trains were left by 1971, and the station was no longer in use, the line was elevated through the area, eliminating the grade crossings.  (‘Course, that did make for some interesting photographic coverage of steam excursions climbing that grade in the ‘70s and ‘80s.) Four-and-a-half miles beyond Winton Place was another interesting facility, served by all the PRR and N&W trains – Norwood.  The station was opened in 1933 on this single-track line and represented PRR’s concept of the art deco architecture of that period.  Beyond that station trains of the two roads split off in three directions.   Neither location, unfortunately, has received the coverage it deserves in published media or on the Internet in my opinion.                         

dabug

[West Coast S]

The great Pacific Electric and Sacramento Northern, I grew up in SN country, at that time the infastructure was basically intact, though the wires and electrics were gone by several years.

Dave 

[CSSHEGEWISCH]

I just missed both of them so I would like to have seen both North Shore Line and the Chicago Aurora & Elgin during the immediate post-WW2 period.  In the same period, I would also like to have seen South Shore's street running in East Chicago.

[wjstix]

One that wasn't before my time - I wish when I was in Harrisburg PA back in July 1971 I knew that there were GG1's a few blocks away that I could have seen. I saw a lot of trains on that long summer vacation car trip (Twin Cities to Sault Ste. Marie to Niagara Falls to Washington DC; DC to Maine to Montreal - Toronto to the Soo, then around the north shore of Superior thru Thunder Bay and back to Minnesota) but as I wasn't yet a model railroader or railfan, just a kid who loved trains, I didn't know what I was looking at...and there are very few photos since film was expensive and we only took pics of important things like stone monuments that will still be there 500 years from now!!!