what has been your favorite memory of trains while growing up?

[caboose63]

Everybody out there, what has been your most favorite memory of trains? this could be say a year ago, this month or way back when you a little kid. for me the most favorite memory of trains for me was the summer of 1968, my parents had taken me and my younger brother ed on trip up north to mackinac city. well we got the railroad crossing at M-66 north of cadillac when lo and behold i saw a real to live goodness steam locomotive Cadillac & Lake City Railway and about 4 passenger cars. talk about lucky, we had arrived about 15 minutes before the next train was to leave missaukee junction there and head to lake city. dad took me over to the 2-8-2 #2 and the engineer adn fireman allowed me to come aboard into the cab of # 2. the engineer even allowed to toot a whistle. its just a shame the shortline was abandoned.

[HEdward]

It gets better everytime!

[Anonymous]

http://www.catskillarchive.com/rrextra/prr1223.Html

Strasburg Railroad 4-4-0. That engine ran very well with the trips to Paradise PA. I think around 1989 it failed a boiler test (Crown sheet?) and will probably never run again. I think it is being preserved at the PRR Train Museum.

[SOU Fan]

Up to this point that would have to be when my uncle let me use his airbrush to weather a boxcar when I was somewhere around 6.

dekruif

[myred02]

Ok, here goes...

Around 1994, I was lucky enough to climb into the cab of a GP40-2 in Guthrie, KY at the RJ Corman/CSX interchange. They let me blow the horn, ring the bell, and everything except drive it. Of course, that was when I was a real little kid. More recently, in 2002, I got the chance to get into the cab of an idling SD70MAC in Crofton, KY on CSX's Henderson Subdivision. They let me ring the bell, blow the horn, etc. They still wouldn't let me drive it! That was when I was around 12 or 13, though. Another good memory was my first 4'x8' layout using a cheap Life Like starter set from like 1993. It was still a layout, though.

Those are some of the best memories of trains I have.

-Brandon

[fiatfan]

Aug 24th, 2002.  Rode in the cab of a UP GP38-2.

Second favorite, I was about 14 and playing in my cousin's back yard which was about 200 yards from the UP mainline out of Omaha.  I heard the most gosh awful noise.  I looked up and it was Armour Yellow but I had never seen or heard anything like it.  Thinking back now, it had to be a turbine.  I couldn't tell you whether it was veranda style or not but the memory is as clear to me today as it was 45 years ago.

Tom

[Virginian]

Back in the '50's before my father died, many Summer Sunday afternoons would find us out at my Uncle's farm.  Hard by the Norfolk / Suffolk N&W mainline at the corner of Yadkin Rd. and Route 17.  We would see Class As racing empty hoppers back to the mines and loads of coal bound for Lambert's point.  But, we came to see the Arrow.  On that fantastic straight from Suffolk to Norfolk you could see her coming a loooooong way off.  First you would see a hint of smoke off and on, over the tracks, and then finally you could make out the engine.  You would faintly hear the unbelievably rapid beat of the exhaust fade in and out first, and then get stronger.  Then she would start blowing for the Galberry Road crossing and that deep whistle and that exhast was the sweetest sound ever heard.  She would blow thru the crossing and then with a ground shaking roar she was there, right in front of us.  Huge and black with a slash of N&W red and those silver rods whirling.  As often as not the engineer would blow the whistle for that little kid wide eyed beside the tracks; just a little early for Rt. 17, but what the heck, and the fireman would smile and wave.  Then those beautiful red cars with the yellow lettering would flash by, and she was gone to Norfolk, usually on the high side of 80 MPH.  No matter how many times I saw it it was never enough.

When 611 was restored in the early 80's, I tried to recapture the moment, albeit I wasn't able to be there for the Eastbound run.  The Rt. 17 / Yadkid Rd. intersection that used to be a "Stop" sign is now a total of about 13 lanes and 6 stoplights.  The farm is now a giant ocean-going container facility with containers stacked 100' high or more.  Two huge highway bridges for Interstate 64 sail over the tracks and the road, right about where we used to stand.  Then just to really do things in, the (Westbound) train comes along pulled by faded black U boats, and a while later here comes 611, backwards, pulled by another U boat (which broke down West of Suffolk), because she couldn't negotiate the loop track in Norfolk anymore.  Oh well, after plowing thru 300 yards of soybeans, a couple of us did get a heck of a cab tour.

A couple of years later I watched 611 and 1218 up Rt. 460 at Windsor.  At least that hasn't turned into a metropolis... yet.  And, it seemed to me that if I squinted and concentrated hard, there was only one headlight... and I was about 2 feet shorter.  And it was real good.

[Anonymous]

In the early 1960's my neighber was friends with the Nickerson, Kansas Rock Island station master. We would play upstairs in the huge frieght warehouse. The doodle bugs that run two times a day to Witchita, Kansas.

[johncolley]

Wow, how about a flood of them? Touring the Train of Tomorrow at Oakland Pier, My stepdad was a 22 year conductor on SP when he passed on in '48, but he used to take me down to the yards when he was stocking his (assigned in those days) caboose with supplies, and doing paperwork. Also we travelled on pass back and forth Oakland to Seattle,  Washington or Vancouver, B.C. ,Canada, many times as I was growing up. I got my first train when I was 10. It was a Marx wind-up. The following year for Christmas I got another train with the same engine but electric! I was thrilled beyond belief! Thanks for the trip down memory lane! jc5729

[mike33469]

When I was a little kid my father used to commute to work by train [in the real early days the train was steam until it reached Jamaica N.Y. where the engines were switched to electric for the rest of the trip into NYC] any way once when my father was taking me to work with him there were no seats left in any of the coaches so we went into the baggage car and rode into the city sitting on boxes. As a little kid I thought that was quite an adventure.

[ARTHILL]

The  sounds of the steam engines on the Milwaukee road in the 40s, in the middle of the night, chuffing hard to get started and the wheels slipping and that fast paced chuffing and the the short whistles. On a hot summers night it made not sleeping enjoyable.

[ShadowNix]

Hmmm... difficult question. I vacillate between playing on my simple HO train set with my dad (it was great in the hot Wisconsin summers since it was in the basement) and taking the train from Zurich to Vienna after a fresh snow... probably one of the most beautiful settings you can imagine.  Hmmm... still undecided.

Brian

[Texas Zepher]

what has been your most favorite memory of trains?

Hmmm, I guess it had to be 1962-1964 working my uncle's farm.  It was right by the AT&SF mainline outside of Granda Colorado.  The nasty weeding, digging irrigation ditches, or mucking cow pens was offset by the  parade of passenger trains passing by with red war bonnets on the point.

[MisterBeasley]

Seems like a lot of us have Father/Son memories going along with our trains.  When I was a boy growing up on Long Island, outside of New York City, my Dad took me on the train for a day of riding the New York subways.  Back then, you could ride the whole system, all day for as long as you liked, for 15 cents.  We rode the front car looking down the tracks to where we were going, and the back car looking back where we'd been.  Sometimes we just rode in the middle, down to the end of the line and back.  I used to dream about subways and tunnels.

Maybe that's why my layout now has a subway, tunnels and underground stations.  I don't have those dreams anymore, since they've become reality.

[Dave-the-Train]

I don't know whether it's my favourite but the image that sticks in my head is from about age 4 to 6... a Western Region 4-6-0 coming through Bristol Temple Meads (I think) picking up speed and blowing like crazy because he had been signal checked.  (To translate that.. one of the largest passenger steam locos we had approaching and passing through curved platforms working flat out and whistling a protest at having been slowed/not given a clear run through.  Our loco whistles are very different from yours... not the  long lonesome hoot more "musical"... but LOUD).  I ran and held onto one of the station canopy supports (or something like that...) It was a long time ago... I may not recall the detail but I can still feel that thing hammering through.

[In those days signalmen (tower operators) could still get a disciplinary charge for delaying priority trains].

I've gone all goose bumps... weird!

Track memories... hundreds...

Sharing my lunch with a field mouse while attending a signal near central London.

Many dawns (I only see them at work - if I'm at home I automatically sleep until 10.00).

A night where it didn't snow but rained miniscule ice particles.

Moon Rainbows.

Being scared s***less by a horse suddenly sticking his head over a fence and whiffling at me... and the laugh after.

Sorting out the aftermath of several "incidents", mostly derailments (fortunately not with injuries or fatalities).  Working flat out and getting the job done 

[emdgp92]

I still remember picking up my grandparents at Pittsburgh's train station years ago. By the late 1970s-early '80s, it was falling apart and in serious need of repair. I remember my mother parking the car under the large dome out front, and walking down the boarded-up (and leaky) promenade to the tracks. Eventually though, that got to be dangerous, so they'd let people drive under there into the former waiting room. To a little kid, the place seemed huge. Everything was so big! Through the windows, I remember seeing some sort of black locomotive belching out huge clouds of exhaust. The trainshed was another interesting area--sometimes you'd get to see freight trains going through there, or bins of brake shoes. I still don't know why those were in there! Even with all that, the one thing I remember most was the noise! Those old Fs and F40s could really howl! Other than that, I don't remember much about the trains themselves. All of those things are gone now--the Fs and quite a few F40s have been retired, the trains aren't as frequent, and the station was remodeled in the 1980s.

Another thing I remember, was that my great-grandmother lived less than a block from the old Monongahela main line through Waynesburg, PA. By that time, the Baldwin Sharks were long gone. Anyway, Grandpa and I would go down there at night, and watch the coal drags fly through town. By "fly," I mean "moving quickly," not that 5mph crap that NS does now. Again, quite a few things are gone--my great-grandmother in 1988, Grandpa less than a year later...and MGA in 1993. About the only things consistant, is her house is still there, and I still watch trains at that location.

[Anonymous]

Too many to say.  But a picture is worth 1,000 words.

Standard goods engine helping a 38 class Pacific with a heavy train on Cowan Bank.

[CSX_road_slug]

Too many to list them all, but here are the highlights...

When I was growing up in southeast Michigan during the Sixties, about once every month my family would go to Parmenter's Cider Mill in Northville, MI, beside the C&O mainline that runs from Toledo to Flint.  We would get our fresh-squeezed cider and doughnuts, and sit there in the pavilion while a few Northbound trains passed by. 

When my family first moved to Maryland (1968), I used to climb to the top of a tall hill with an undisturbed view of the B&O mainline between Washington DC and PointOfRocks, MD.  [Sure wish video cameras had been as cheap and plentiful back then as they are today!] 

In April 1971, a friend of mine took me on a railfanning trip to Cumberland, MD, and other nearby railfanning hot spots in the region (Harpers Ferry, Brunswick, Hagerstown) - a life-changing trip, it made me a permanent devotee of the B&O.

After getting my drivers license, I would drive to Baltimore to the B&O Riverside Shops to see what motive power was there; one Sunday afternoon I was chatting with the shop electrician, and he said "Wanna ride the helpers?" So I spent the next 4 hours riding in the cabs of an F7A and an ex-C&O GP9 thru the Howard Street Tunnel. 

Those are just a small sample of the experiences I remember - I would need a whole book for all the ones after that <LOL>!

[Jumijo]

No one specific thing comes to mind, but growing up in New England in the 1960's, I was lucky enough to see plenty of B&M freights, as the main line went right by my house. I used to really get a kick out of seeing the B&A State of Maine cars rumble by. At the time, I had no idea what was in them, but I loved the look of them. so distictive from every thing else. They really stood out. Now I know they were used to carry potatos and paper. And those blue cabooses on the end of the train are now gone forever. And so is the B&M.

Jim

[Pruitt]

I have three particularly nice memories -

The first one is of driving past the long viaduct which held long strings of tank cars waiting to go into the Standard refinery on the west end of Casper. That was around 1963-64. I was seven / eight years old.

The second is of the track on a bridge crossing over the highway, wich t-itself crossed over Alkali creek at the same point. This is between Powell and Cody Wyoming. One time I was riding with my dad in his highway patrol car at night, and a train passed over us as we crossed the creek. This was around 1965. Last time I looked a few years ago, the highway bridge was still there, although the highway had been re-routed and now crosses the tracks at grade nearby.

The third is of a ride with a C&NW engineer as he switched the industries in Riverton Wyoming in 1974. I had just a month or two earlier graduated from high school. The track that went on to Lander had already been abandoned; the track in Riverton was abandoned a few years after that ride in the cab.

[oleirish]

I think it was when I was about 4 hearing the whistle of the S.P.Daylite and going out on the porch and watching it come by,At the time I lived with my grand ma and grand pa in a place called carpentarira(spelling)on the coast of California,some where around Santa Barbaria I'am 64 now and can here an train whistle and still think about it!

J IM   

[Anonymous]

What does "Grown up" mean?  Ain't gonna go!  You can't make me!!!

I had grandparents who lived in Greene, Iowa and on one of my pappy's furloughs in either 1947 or 1948 (my parents, who are both still alive, by the way, can't remember exactly which and since I was only 7 or 8 I can't remember either) we went back for a visit; on our return to Riverside, Calif we stopped for a few hours in Ft Dodge, Iowa where an uncle of my pappy's lived.  He worked for the Northwestern and on this particular day we went out to the railyards to see him; I am going to guess that he was a roundhouse hostler because when we located him he was in the process of moving a locomotive onto the turntable to turn it so it could be aligned to the proper stall in the roundhouse.  Anyway, he took me up into the cab, we eased onto the turntable, we went around, and when we had lined up onto the proper track we eased off and then it all ended and I was back down on the ground. 

The only pictures I have to remember that day and that experience are the pictures burned into my memory; I can't tell you what the number was on this engine or what its wheel arrangement was; I only remember being up in the cab of this huge, black monster which had, I am going to guess, just come in off of the road and was being hostled into the roundhouse for some kind of repairs.

This experience is almost sixty years in my past now - it was just a summer day at the roundhouse in Ft Dodge, Iowa but it was my day and it is vividly etched into my memory.   

[beaver3365]

When I was a little boy growing up in Elkhorn City, KY, the Clinchfield would run a train from there to Kingsport TN. called the Santa Train. Santa would be on the deck of a observation car and throw candy to kids along the way. It's now part of CSX and still continues today.

   Also, once in awhile my uncle Bobby would let my brother and me ride with him on his C&O coal drag up through Ashcamp, KY.