My Avatar - A reminder of happy childhood days!

[mobilman44]

Hi!

I usually post in the model railroading forum, but thought I would join you all for a bit......

My avatar is a pretty fair HO scale model of my Grandmom's house in Anna Illinois - as it was in the 1950s.  It took me a few months of evenings to finish, as it is a kitbash of two kits (hip roofs are rare in the model world), and a whole lot of scratchbuilt details added. 

The house sits at the end of Grove Avenue (#205), with the IC "racetrack" a stones throw away.  We lived in Chicago, and would make a couple trips a year in the '50s to see "Mom" - which I confess meant "watching trains" to me.  The house was 2 bedroom, 1 living room, and a kitchen.  The "bath" was a two holer behind the house, and until the mid-50s water was pumped out back.  Heat was from a coal burning pot bellied stove, and the cookstove burned wood and corncobs.  How in the world Mom could make those wonderful meals on a stove like that still amazes me.

 At the time, there were 4 tracks going by the house - 2 mains, 1 passing siding, and 1 industry siding.  Train frequency seemed to be about 1 an hour, and the highlight was the brown/orange streamliners that blasted thru town.  There were also a lot of GPs pulling mixed freight or coal trains, and up through 1958 steamers were pretty common!

I spent a lot of time trackside, but to be honest, those fast streamliners and monsterous 4-8-2s scared me - so when a train was coming, I backed off quite a bit.  I also spent a lot of time on the porch swing, and you could get a pretty good view of the trains, at least until the Wright Brothers put up a mill between the house and the tracks.

My closest encounter was with an 0-8-0 switcher that was moving some cars around, and it was like a huge powerful beast - sort of scary - but captivating at the same time. 

But what I remember most fondly was late at night, lying on a "pallet" on the living room floor, and with the windows open you could hear that "wooo, wooo, wo, woooooo" sounds from miles away, getting louder with each road crossing they made, until the train roared by, vibrating the house.  

Of course I have a huge regret about all this, and that is I never took any pictures.  I figured those trains would always be there, as would everything else, and besides, pictures cost money.

Hey, I suspect my story is not unlike a lot of yours, and I hope your memories are as nice as mine.

Mobilman44