steve-in-kville ... do tracks seem to hum somehow when a train gets closer?
In my experience, sometimes they do, but if you can hear it you're probably too close to the track and the train is probably close to you.
I remember there being more 'hum' back in the bad old days when track maintenance was lower and wheels were less frequently turned, so more energy was available to 'ring' the rails. Now the hum can be clearly heard during the passage of some heavy trains, perhaps more pronounced on Pandrol-equipped track, but it is not something giving more than a few seconds of reliable warning in advance of visible sighting of a train in most cases.
Regards - Steve
Walking along the tracks on publicly owned land is best. Always best to check ahead of time.. generally the land owners who won't erect a fence or even put up a private property sign are the ones who will become most unhinged if you inadertently cross their property. I stick to parks and gardens and public roads..
steve-in-kville, there's nothing wrong with walking along the tracks in a agricultural setting as long as I do not cross the tracks other than a grade crossing. Maybe I'm splitting hairs here, but that's how I interpret what I read.
Railroad will send the cops after you. But a farmer with a shotgun may also pay you a visit.
It's been fun. But it isn't much fun anymore. Signing off for now.
The opinions expressed here represent my own and not those of my employer, any other railroad, company, or person.t fun any
The right-of-way usually extends an appreciable distance beyond the edge of the ballast. In a rural area, the farmer's fence may well mark the limits of the railroad property, even if it's twenty feet from the tie ends. As has been pointed out elsewhere, it still constitutes trespassing to walk there.
To add to what everyone else has said above, there's the escape from reality feeling as well when I watch a train go by and wish I was headed somewhere else than where I am standing- usually at work.Gonna catch a freight train,far as I can.I don't care where it goes.Ride me a southbound, all the way to Georgia now,till train, it run outta track...
Thanks to Chris / CopCarSS for my avatar.
Semper, that sounds very similar to my experience. We lived in the port city of Tela, Honduras, and about the only export was bananas. I listened to them switching cars at night (all banana cars, which were open-slatted boxcars; I guess, basically stock cars). It was often a struggle getting the trains started out of the yard, and they sometimes stalled, sometimes with drivers slipping, and had to take up the slack several times and get running starts. Once they got moving out on the main, they'd slowly accelerate, blow for the crossing at the edge of town and fade away. Steam engines are alive!
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"A stranger's just a friend you ain't met yet." --- Dave Gardner
Too many years ago, on HOT summer nights, with the windows open, lying perfectly still in bed, but sweating profusely, hoping for a breeze, I could hear steam locomotives working a yard about a mile south of where I lived.
I'd hear a steam loco come from some distance away, whistling for several grade crossings as it got closer. Then there'd be various whistle signals and a series of chuffs. I knew that one whistle meant, "I am stopped" (so the switchman/men could throw switches), two whistles meant "I am going to go forward" and three whistles for "I am going to back up".
Once the engine arrived, I could hear 3 whistles and chuffing as the engine backed to a string of cars and I could hear a coupling occur. Then 2 whistles and a longer series of chuffs, starting LOUD and slow, getting faster but quieter, and ending with 2 or 3 muffled chuffs when the throttle would get closed and the train would slow to a stop amidst some squealing of the brakes on the engine. Then one short toot on the whistle.
Then there would be three toots and a quick couple of chuffs and more squealing and another short single toot. That was often followed by a kerbang as the car that had been shoved off the end of the train ran down a siding and coupled to cars already there. It was always fun to try to imagine what kind of car just coupled. Some, with a hollow reverberation, sounded like they had to be empty tank cars (BOOM-boom-boomboom-mm-mm). Others with just a quick bang had to be a boxcar or coal car that was fully loaded.
There might be several in the series of 3 toots, a couple of chuffs and a kerbang. I figure that was multiple shoves of cars into successively deeper yard tracks. Sometimes there would then be 2 toots followed by several chuffs and that was when the whole string had to be pulled further out to get the cars back past earlier switches.
This would go on for a a couple of hours. Repeating the fetch of a long string and flat switching them to the yard tracks. Then all would go quiet for a half hour.
Then I could hear what had to be a much larger engine approach, also whistling for the grade crossings.
It would then whistle once, and after a pause of a few minutes, it would whistle 3 times, chuff a few times, and make a muffled coupling. Another longer pause, punctuated by an air compressor pumping hard, it would whistle twice and start chuffing LOUD and slow. The chuffing would slowly get faster, and at times the chuffing would become very rapid as the engine lost traction and the chuffing would quit for a second, then start up again slightly slower than just before it got so rapid and it would continue the loud and slow, hard chuffing and again start speeding up. It would whistle for grade crossings on the way out of town and the sounds would quiet as it got further away.
Then it was time to get up and go to school!
When I go watch trains now, it is at one end of a flat switching yard and I see what I heard so many years ago, but the engine is a Dismal and they use radios instead of whistle signals. But, being there reminds me of those hot, sleepless summer nights so long ago.
Ah, nostalgia... it ain't what it used to be.
Semper Vaporo
Pkgs.
To me it was a combination of many things.
1) The sheer size and mass of a moving machine. It made the earth shake. It was like nothing else. Nothing even came close. (I formed an instant attachment to E units and F units.) Watching a train aproaching the depot, from that first distant glimmer of the headlight. The anticipation. The worry that you could stand too close, but you wanted to get as close as you dared. The signals and other (sometimes odd-looking) railroad infrastructure setting the unique stage for this recurring drama. The feeling that this was an occasion! A big one.
2) The sounds. The engines, the horns and bells and air-brake noises, the clankity-clank of the cars. The squealing brakes. The grade-crossing bells. And in addition, there would always be other intriguing noises not initially familiar to a kid from the 50's suburbs, like sounds of a neaby sawmill or other industrial sites.
3) The smells. The diesel exhaust. Hot brake shoes. The strong smell of creosoted ties baking in the heat of my native South. Odors of stuff like soybeans that fell from freight cars. The scent of the greasy spoon across the street from the depot.
4) The people. Engineers, seemingly larger than life, in control of the beasts. (In those days, I'd sometimes see passenger train hoggers in dapper attire and jaunty hats.) Officious, impatient uniformed conductors, anxious to give the departure highball. Nervous departing passengers, people meeting long-away returning travelers. Baggage men, working like machines so as not to hold up (in my case) The Hummingbird. Exotic characters, like the men living in the mysterious work trains that would periodically squat on a siding across from the depot platform. Hoboes.
5) Potential for surprise. Like steam locomotive tenders on the work trains (I am guessing for the purpose of feeding stoves in the camp cars). An engine or car of a type I'd never seen before.
6) Let's not forget the flattening of coins by passing trains, and the sometimes futile effort to find them afterwards.
7) The ever-present sense of history. All that neat old stuff, everywhere around the railroad.
8) The knowledge that this was just one small spot on a giant, massive network that one could ride anywhere in America to who knows what kind of adventure.
9) Collecting timetables from the mostly friendly, but sometimes scary-grumpy station agents. "Will he really believe that I need a Great Northern one this time?" I was also known to bring home a rusty spike or two, etc.
All these things conspired to rope in a young kid from New Orleans and Gulfport Mississippi, and never let him go.
I am not a religious person. But if there is an afterlife which includes optional time-travel, I want to spend some time in steam's heyday (which I missed). But once I do that, I'll be most happy just to relive the days I spent at the Gulfport depot. Lots of those days. I can still almost feel them. Taste them. Those were some of the happiest times in my entire life.
I remember watching Norfolk and Western's City of St. Louis and City of Kansas City roll through Ferguson MO as a kid. In the 70s, I watched the Southern Crescent, the Piedmont, the James Whitcomb Riley and tons of Southern and C&O freights rolling through West Springfield VA. I can still hear the rails singing ahead of 4 E8s tugging the Southern Crescent uphill in run 8 from Accotink Creek. I took my son to watch trains near our Oregon home from the time he was a baby ("Grief and Joy along the Southern Pacific", TRAINS, July 2013.) It's just in our DNA.
Flintlock76 Interesting you brought up artefacts Ulrich. There's a local rail musem here, and on display they've got some railroad artefacts going back as far as the Civil War one of their members found along a long-abandoned right-of-way. Mind you, it wasn't easy, he had to do some serious brush-busting and metal detecting to find them. Deep woods and yucky swamps too. Better man than I am!
Interesting you brought up artefacts Ulrich.
There's a local rail musem here, and on display they've got some railroad artefacts going back as far as the Civil War one of their members found along a long-abandoned right-of-way. Mind you, it wasn't easy, he had to do some serious brush-busting and metal detecting to find them. Deep woods and yucky swamps too. Better man than I am!
Finding this stuff really makes history come alive too. I've got a garage full of collectibles.. likely not of much dollar value.. clay bottles, glass bottles mostly that friends of mine who work in construction have found for me. Also found some of mine along railroads and highways..
York1 My father would take me and some neighborhood kids to the UP mainline, including some switching tracks, in our town in the evening to watch the trains (and pick up unusual rocks, find treasures in junk along the track, etc.). For a real thrill, we'd catch a passenger train coming through, and I developed my dreams of traveling.
I had a similar experience. On most Sunday mornings my father would take me and my brother to the 24th street turntable where we could watch the trains arriving and/or departing from Altoona. Most of the locomotives were still steam. It was a great bonding experience.
Another nice thing about watching trains is you don't have to cheer or boo or participate in the wave.
steve-in-kvilleHonestly, if I knew I'd get away with it, I'd love to walk along side the tracks for a mile or two, between crossings. See whats to be seen. Would that be trespassing? Not sure of NS' policy on that....
I used to do that years ago as a kid. If you enjoy history and don't mind walking through thick brush there's often a treasure trove to be discovered if you walk about 10 to 15 feet from the rail. The folks who built the railroad often left stuff behind.. I've found shovels, bottles and other small artifacts.. obviously old, that have been there for over a hundred years. But, let me end by saying that one shouldn't do that unless you've got permission to be on the property from the railroad.
A woman who belongs to my toy train club had an interesting description of train watching...
"It's like watching a parade of mastodons!"
Isn't that something? Wish I'd thought of that!
Steve-in-kville, as long as you're nowhere near the tracks they might not make a big deal out of it, but I wouldn't bet on it. In this lawsuit-happy age railroads are understandably intolerant of tresspassing in any form. Best to play it safe and stay off the property.
ROWs are generally 60-100' wide, so yes, that would likely be trespassing. Not that that stops a lot of people. There seem to be those who consider the tracks a public thoroughfare, and take great exception if you tell them they are not.
Larry Resident Microferroequinologist (at least at my house) Everyone goes home; Safety begins with you My Opinion. Standard Disclaimers Apply. No Expiration Date Come ride the rails with me! There's one thing about humility - the moment you think you've got it, you've lost it...
The almighty Santa Fe got me hooked! When you're a child watching a pig train fly by at 70 mph.. Nothing else in my opinion compares!
Growing up in a poor family, there was not money for entertainment.
My father would take me and some neighborhood kids to the UP mainline, including some switching tracks, in our town in the evening to watch the trains (and pick up unusual rocks, find treasures in junk along the track, etc.). For a real thrill, we'd catch a passenger train coming through, and I developed my dreams of traveling.
I have loved watching trains ever since.
Our town also had a small airport that had Frontier Airlines service several times a week. My father would take us to the airport when a plane was scheduled. We'd watch it land, watch the people get off and on, and then watch it take off.
Today, when I tell my kids and grandkids how we spent many of our summer evenings, they find it funny and amazing that we would spend our time that way. They have no idea how much fun we had.
York1 John
Awe inspiring. Just imagine the thought and expertise and craftsmanship that went into building what we see.
blhanel I think the basic root of it all for me is the fascination of watching that much weight and mass move and accelerate that fast.
I think the basic root of it all for me is the fascination of watching that much weight and mass move and accelerate that fast.
If we are minding our own business and an elephant walks past, we'd soon take notice. As you say, trains are big, noisy, often move at just the right pace that they stand out compared to other items rushing past, and they look stately, maybe regal, almost like an elephant does.
It helps that they're mechanical, resolute, seemingly purposeful, and that they cause the ground to shake if standing close. Even the air pulses around them. Anyone who has walked past a sizeable Roots blower knows what I'm talking about.
I’ve pondered this periodically myself and have concluded the interest in trains (or ships, trucks or aircraft) is genetic.
What attracts me to railfanning now is the same thing that attracted me to fishing or bird hunting - I like being outside, enjoying the day and my surroundings. I’ve rarely been bored while out railfanning, even if I’m by myself. While waiting for the next train; I can find enjoyment in something as simple as watching a groundhog sun itself in the middle of a dirt road or deer feeding in a corn field.
I guess the trains are my excuse to be outside but; simply enjoying the day is the real reason I railfan.
alphas I combine hiking and watching the forest wildlife along Spruce Creek while watching the trains go by on the NS. Sometimes fishing there while watching the trains. The PA mountins are always beautiful and central PA is among the best.
My father fished Spruce Creek for decades. He tried to get me into fishing, but I was not a chip off the old block, at least with respect to fishing.
I lived in NYC for nearly 8 years. I regularly took the train from NYC to Altoona. When we went through the Spruce Creek tunnel, I knew that Tyrone was to follow shortly and then Altoona. We called it the Spruce Creek tunnel; I am not sure if that is the correct name.
As I remember it, the speed from Huntingdon to Tyrone was pretty slow, but after the train rounded the curve at Tyrone, he went hell bent for leather towards Altoona. We seemingly flew by Bellwood. Then a few minutes later the conductor began to sing out, Altoona, Altoona will be next, the rear door out for Altoona.
You are spot-on regarding the beauty of central Pennsylvania. The leaves should be turning shortly, and the autumn color spectacular will be something to behold.
Oh, BTW, I like watching trains because I do.
I combine hiking and watching the forest wildlife along Spruce Creek while watching the trains go by on the NS. Sometimes fishing there while watching the trains. The PA mountins are always beautiful and central PA is among the best.
I'm not a hard-core "If I don't get out and watch trains I'll die!" railfan, but when I do I'll have to admit it's because it's the best show in town, and it's free!
A hell of a lot better than any movies that have come out lately. Seems no-one makes movies for mature men anymore.
Brian (IA) http://blhanel.rrpicturearchives.net.
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