When did you become a railfan?

[siberianmo]

My Grandpa was responsible for it all. From the very first Christmas morning that I can remember, there was an Ives train running around the tree. From there, he took me for trips aboard the S.I.R.T. (translated: Staten Island Rapid Transit) to places like St. George, South Beach and Tottenville. Those trains really were above ground subway cars, opeating from a third rail. Nevertheless, they were trains!

On Sundays, he would take me to Manhattan and we would ride the "El." Many times we would go to Grand Central and Pennsylvania stations. I don't know how he did it, but we would get right down into the depths of those wonderful stations and walk the platforms with the gleaming passenger cars all raring to go. There were lots of not-so-gleaming ones there as well, but the streamliners had arrived and they were beauties.

To this day, I have great visions of the Pennsylvania, New York Central, New Haven and others. As I got older, the trips graduated to travel aboard real trains - the B&O to Baltimore to visit close friends, the Pennsy to WashDC to visit relatives and the New York Central up to Albany, just for the fun of it.

Entering the service in 1956, I spent 6 months in Groton, Connecticut and used to take the NH back to NYC on weekends. Boy, do I remember those trains.

A long answer to a great question - I know. But that's what makes us railfans - memories!!

[agentatascadero]

In 1943 we happened to live in the second floor quarters of the Aromas,CA SP station. I was just learning to walk, and when I heard a train coming I would get down on hands and knees and Zoom to the window, walking was too slow and unreliable. It's one of my favorite baby stories, and it bothers me to this day that I have no recall of my year or so there. By the time I was 10 we had made 7 transcontinental rail trips, those are memories I treasure.

[traingang]

When Conrail was created, and all the engines from eastern Pennsylvania (RDG, LV, etc.) started rolling thru Lima on the PRR main line to Chicago. I was just out of college and doing survey work on a bridge job a quarter mile from the tracks.

[Anonymous]

It had to be about 1964, I was three years old. My Dad and I were on the way to Detroit's Metro airport to pick up my Grandmother flying in from Pellston, MI (on North Central Airlines but that's for another web-site). We were the first car stopped at the New York Central tracks (could it have been the Penn Central by '64?) between Dearborn and Ann Arbor, MI. The cross buck signals were flashing but we were running late and Dad must have been thinking about darting across the tracks were it not for my excitment of both going to the airport AND seeing a train in the same trip. He waited, perhaps not wanting to set a bad example but he was also a transportation junky too. The speed was awesome, I had never seen a passenger train before let alone any train traveling that fast. I remember the color green , clean emerald green paint and huge glass windows. The engine was an EMD F or E. It was over in a flash and I was hooked.

[fievel]

I became a railfan growing up beside NKP / N&W in northern Ohio. When I was
young, I couldn't understand why nobody else in my family loved trains.
Still can't figure that one out ! Oh,well. At least I've got many pleasant memories
of trainwatching ![:D]

[Anonymous]

Well I became a rail fan when I could just start to remember cause of my dad. He grew up during steam out in southwest Texas where there was a lot of big SP steam in those days as I understand it. Guess he always wanted to railroad but due to an accident when he was about eight he lost sight in one eye and of course that disqualified him as ever being able to railroad. Anyway jump ahead about forty years and we were living in Cleburne Texas where my father ran a very successful auto repair bussiness. As a lot of you will know that was a big Santa Fe railroad town. A lot of the employees came to my fathers bussiness with their cars. And after office hours at the railroad back in those days we would go visit them at the switch shantys some evenings. My first ride was probably in an SW2 in the engineers lap before I was five. Then I modeled and railfaned all my school years. Worked for the AT&SF for a summer as brakeman/switchman about four months before going in the navy. Then ended up married in Chicago after the Navy and did ten more years as a conductor/brakeman/collector/forman all over the Illinois and Wisconsin divisions till they were trying to force me permanently back into Chicago and I resigned. Was offered a position in trainservice again with UP in 2001 and declined at the last moment. Still love railroading, on a warm summer night when I hear a big lashup in notch eight off in the distance I regret having left. When it is February and thirty below am glad I work indoors during the day. Railroading has changed a lot over my fifty years. Was really hard long hours first time. Was a dream when I first went back in Chicago. Used to catch the bird at least twice a week each way. Then management, our good friend Ricky Gates and coporate greed really started to take the fun out of it. Was the reason I declined last offer with UP. A BLE local officer I was friends with told me they really ride butts there. And if anyone really wants to know how tough taking the plunge is. Sure seems like a lot of good friends either never make it to retirement for health reasons or depart for the great marshaling yard in the sky soon after. All I know is it takes a very special breed to ever do it at all let alone forty years. Hope the unions can make it a descent job for rails someday. Railroads did build the country and we owe it and the people who make them keep running 24/7 a lot of gratitude. Sorry if I was long winded.

[Anonymous]

When my Grandpa got me a Lionel New York Central Flyer train set in 1995 when I was 2 years old. I've been hooked ever since.

[Anonymous]

the moment I realized it gave me a better chance of being asked out by a guy in my train dispatch class.

[Anonymous]

I grew up on the L&N mainline just north of Atlanta, GA. It's now the CSX and I'm still lovin' those trains.

[TheS.P.caboose]

When I was little I enjoyed watching the trains roll by. In 1986 I got interested to the point of wanting to learn more about the whole industry. The interest continues to this day, mostly about the operations end.

[underworld]

The first time I saw a train!!!!!

underworld

[:D][:D][:D][:D][:D]

[Anonymous]

When I was young. My dad gave me my first train set. I would also go down to the tracks with him to watch.

[Morgan49]

My parents tell my that at age 3 I became interested in trains but my first memory of trains was from 1975. My grand Parents lived in Vancouver BC and that summer was the first year the Royal hudson ran on the BC rail this was a big treat for them as much as myself for they had waved to the queen on the train that was responsible for Cp's hudson being named royal hudsons. Being only 6 at the time the large hudson impressed me greatly. Since then I can't get enough trains.

[West Coast S]

Watching high hood Alcos hefting loads over the Blueridge at 8 yearsof age. Pacing the 759 at what must have been 75 mph somewhere in the midwest on the Golden Spike limited. My earliest memories are of the Ohau Railway moving containers at Hickam AFB and mainline steam on the Japan National Railway ( I was invited into the cab and encouraged to assist the fireman in adding a few scoops of coal to the firebox ).

[Anonymous]

When I was around the age of 7 I became a railfan because I learned that my father was a engineer for Amtrak/Conrail. Plus most Kids want to do whatever there parents do. It just made me so happy knowing that I could ask him anything about trains and that he had the answers, even today. From the many rides up in the cab and from reading all his study books I strongly feel in love with trains that I wanted to make a career out of it. But do to the work hours required, MS train simulator. is as close as I well get to running a real train.