Track fiddlerI found it admirable you could find modern diesels Keen after dereliction of the steam era you lived.
In those days, steam engines were the mundane, a Diesel and an electric locomotive the rare exception. That changed rapidly from the mid-60s onwards and all of a sudden, steam engines were no longer - not even fan trips, as Deutsche Bundesbahn would not allow steam engines being operated on their tracks. Fortunately, that has changed since and we can now enjoy plenty of steam again!
Talking of steam - the iron horse was and always will be a steam engine for me, not a Diesel or electric engine.
Sir Madog Trains were very much a part of my childhood and teenage years. My parents bought a car not before I was a teenager, so prior to that, all our family travels were done by train. Steam was still king in those years and nothing beats the rumble of a Pacific passing at speed with a string of coaches! Hard to believe that I was really keen to see an exotic locomotive - like the early Diesels and electrics, which all of a sudden took over. Steam disappeared as late as 1977, but it was a slow death, marked with neglect and dereliction.
Trains were very much a part of my childhood and teenage years. My parents bought a car not before I was a teenager, so prior to that, all our family travels were done by train. Steam was still king in those years and nothing beats the rumble of a Pacific passing at speed with a string of coaches! Hard to believe that I was really keen to see an exotic locomotive - like the early Diesels and electrics, which all of a sudden took over. Steam disappeared as late as 1977, but it was a slow death, marked with neglect and dereliction.
Alrich. I found it admirable you could find modern diesels Keen after dereliction of the steam era you lived.
I grew up after the transformation era but developed a great admiration for steam locomotives after I seen a restored Union Pacific Challenger steam engine come through and stop in Shakopee Minnesota.
After that I developed great respect for old steam. I stood next to the great iron Beast after it stopped. I felt like it was breathing and for brief moment I almost felt like it was alive.
You and some of the few lived and experienced the reign of these magnificent machines.
Myself and many never did or ever will.
For these reasons I will model both and have more respect for Steam.
Best wishes
Track Fiddler
my steller memory from my youth is a sad one . one day in the late summer of 56 i was going out to the back pasture to collect the cows for milking and heard a whistle thought for a moment it was the saw mill up valley but after it sounded again i knew it was a steam loco . so i got up to where the cow path crossed the railroad and waited in a short time i saw the loco bellowing smoke , sounding like it was laboring hard . as it approched as the others stated the groung started to shake and low and behold it was upon me , don't remember what type of loco it was other than huge as the train emerged from the brush blocking my view , i saw that the loco was all rusty and leaking steam everywhere . like a judis goat it was leading a whole train of delerict locos probley to the scrap yards , there must have been at least a dozen or more locos . that was the last time i saw steam on the railroad .
I have to say I enjoyed reading almost everyone's post here.
"Like getting a wave from God" from Bear's post was so rich in flavor to me, I just had to read it to my wife......She replied..... "the innocence of children is so magical", with a big smile on her face.
Stix and Cedarwoodron. It is really ironic you both replied in the same thread. My grandmother lived within blocks from the Holy Angels Academy in Richfield between Nicollet and Lyndale. I remember always walking to the Hub Hobby store off 66th Street whenever we went to her house for a visit. I also remember going to Gaugers hobby store at Southdale not far from there too.
Stix I grew up in St Louis Park too. We lived somewhere between the Park 100's down from Win Stevens Buick and Birchwood Park.
The Trestle, kind of the hangout area, wasn't far west from Win Stevens Buick.
As far as Casey Jones, I always watched him too. I remember his sidekick Roundhouse. It was filmed in that higher building down by Lake Calhoun next to the Calhoun Beach Club.
Casey Jones was a little crazy sometimes. I remember watching when I was a kid. He would do a skit around Christmas time. Walking in My Winter Underwear..... instead of (walking in a winter wonderland). The guy would come out nancing around in his long johns. It was hilarious from what I remember.
Thanks for sharing memories. I almost forgot about Casey Jones on Channel 11.
PS Cedarwoodron. There was a trail on the side of the main tracks that ran towards downtown Minneapolis that we used to ride our bikes to go fish at Cedar Lake. Later we found out if we went a little further down to fish the smaller lake named Brownie behind the Prudential life insurance building. We had much better luck there.
Yep when I was a kid I always liked hanging out at my Uncle's house over in Bloomfield, PA. When he wasn't working on a muscle car or something I liked standing near this one railing and watching the Conrail freight trains go by. It was a nice mix of manifests and piggyback trains and an Amtrak passenger train would pass through too. Despite it being the late 80s you could still occasionally see a caboose on the end of some of the trains.
Hi. just got back into town from holiday fun with the family. I see some replies on the thread here. I'm excited to read through them after a bite to eat and a little unwinding. Hope everybody had a wonderful Thanksgiving.
Thanks for sharing
Stix:
I grew up in St Louis Park and also watched Lunch With Casey
I could hear trains from my house as we were just south of the GN tracks that ran into Mpls from the west. (Now TC&W tracks where they run along Cedar Lake.
I remember hearing the diesel horns and the sound of heavy freights moving in the night- a virtual lullaby for a train-loving kid!
Today I have a house just a block off a CSX line running thru northwest suburban Tampa- and have been able to enjoy the sounds of a night train for over 20 years, just as in my youth.
What a wonderful thing!
Cedarwoodron
When we'd go over the mountain to shop, if it was train time, Mom would at the station and we'd wait for a train to come through. Loved the smell of the smoke.
As the steam era was coming to a close and the Rutland was slowly dieing, she took my grandfather, one of my friends and I on one of the last, regularly scheduled, steam passenger trains. Took photos of us at the station, not a one of the train. Duah! Remember waiting on a siding for a freight to roll past us headed South.
Good memories,
Richard
My first exposure was was riding commuter trains into London (UK), by age 15 my friend and I were were allowed to ride into London by ourselves. My Dad would draw out a map of the Tube (subway) so we knew where to change trains and get across London. If we were lucky we would spot a freight in a siding. I can recall the din of the slam door carriages before electric operated doors. Such a distinct sound, and I can picture a train pulling into the station and the doors would be open long before the train came to a stop.
As youngsters we thought it was cool if our train was pulled by a diesel instead of an electric.
I came to Ohio in 1988 and lived close to the B &O Midland Sub, CSX was pulling autoracks from Columbus to Cincinnati, I was in a new world and was hooked.
For me it was the Southern Pacific, and yes I do remember feeling the ground quake as those big engines went by. The thing I disliked was the loud horns as they would blow at the intersections so as long as you weren't near any intersection you were okay. My parents used to take me down to the rail yard in the center of town to watch the trains go by when I was three or four years old and I would stand up in the front seat of the car and watch the action. That was back in the late 1960s. So much has changed since then. Now it's all Union Pacific...
Wow Stix, thats quite a story. And to all of you, I'm envious that you had fathers that also loved trains, and gave you the opportunity to experience them. My father died when I was 7. He was an up and coming industrial engineer for Waukesha Motors, now part of GE.
My mother remarried a tenant farmer, we spent until my late teens, bouncing around Wisconsin, Illinois and Iowa on different farms. The biggest, loudest and most powerful equipment I was exposed to was farm machinery. My first exposure to trains was while I would spend some summers at my grandpa's farm in Wisconsin, while we lived in Iowa. Thats where I started paying attention to the SOO line. Other than the occasional wait at a railroad crossing, I didn't really get to be track side, and feel the rush, see the massive equipment up close and personal, and feel the ground pounding, until the late 80's, when I became totally enthralled by the start-up WC (Wisconsin Central), with it's different locos from different roads, and the fleet of former BN SD45's, patched out with a very small WC on the side of the cab.
Mike.
My You Tube
I grew up in Richfield MN, across the street from the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern, which normally ran two trains a day powered by a Baldwin VO-1000 or DRS 6-6-1500, or an FM H-10-44 or H-12-44. Otherside of the tracks was a farm field, and a scrub/prairie grass area with pheasant's nests that was part of the grounds of Holy Angels Academy, a girl's convent school. Later the school went co-ed, and the scrubgrass area became the football field where future Arizona Cardinals star Larry Fitzgerld Jr. played. I used to wave from my yard and the train crew would wave back. As the days got shorter and it was already dark when they'd come by around 6 pm, I'd flash my front porch light at them. One year, near Christmas, they stopped the train in front of my house and gave me one of those railroad flashlights with the long red tube to use instead.
Railroads were important enough to the Twin Cities 50+ years back that our local daytime kid's program was "Lunch With Casey", with Roger Awsumb playing "Casey Jones". At noon he'd park his train and go inside (the roundhouse? yard office? it was never really clear) to have lunch served to him by "Joe the Cook" (forget the actor's name, but he later moved to Seattle and spent many years playing a clown on a kid's show there).
As it happens, I was home eating lunch and watching Lunch with Casey 54 years ago today, when the tv station (WTCN 11) broke in with the reports of Pres. Kennedy having been shot in Dallas.
My childhood memories isn't that of the last days of main line steam,shiny new GP9s or RS11s nay,the fondest memories was watching a NYC Alco S2 switch cars at the McKinley Avenue yard..There's nothing like the sound of a Alco switcher hard at work.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
My childhood memories of train watching were during the vacations we spent at our family's cabin on Donner Pass. We would go there for summer, Christmas, and spring vacations. Every time I heard a train coming I would run to one of a couple of different lookout spots to watch the train go by. Sometimes two trains would pass each other going opposite directions on the double track main. There was a wide variety of trains back then. A lot of them were mixed freight while some of them were unit trains of coal and sometimes there would be intermodal trains which were mostly piggyback trailers, however sometimes there would be semi’s, tractors or other farming or construction equipment. And of course back in those days there were still open automobile carriers loaded with brand new cars. For the most part the trains were Southern Pacific freight trains and an occasional Amtrak passenger train. The Southern Pacific trains would usually have three EMD SD units on the point and about 3/4ths of the way back there would be four additional helpers cut in. Sometimes there would be more but that was generally the case. Tunnel motors were popular on this route because of the many tunnels. They were designed specifically for this route. In the winter the rotary plows would come by and blow snow down the side of the hill. It made great runs for inner tubes or snow saucers.
Happy Days, Cheers, the Bear.
"One difference between pessimists and optimists is that while pessimists are more often right, optimists have far more fun."
I always loved anything "big" in motion. I liked trains and would watch them every chance I got, even if having no clue what they were carrying.
My folks wouldn't let me have a train set. Theyprobably thought I'd play too hard with it and destroy it. They were absolutely right. (Also one of those kids that took everything apart, too)
More on the topic though, here's a real kicker that still bugs me... As much as I loved trains, and everyone knew it, it was only in the last 3 years or so I learned that we lived WALKING DISTANCE from a sizible and busy SP engine terminal with a round house and turntable, in Oregon for 3 years of my young life. Couldn't SOMEONE have taken me for an occasional gander at the action there?
Yeah, the iron horses WERE coming through, and I didn't get to even know of it. I was ROBBED!
Dan
My grandmother used to travel by rail to Florida from Wisconsin to visit us when I was very young. While we waited for her train to show up, a few freight trains might go by, and I do remember feeling it, and I was enthralled with the power of a train.
.
I wish I could remember more detail. We lived in Gainesville, Florida, but we had to drive a long way to the station, so it must have been out of town. Maybe in Tampa or Jacksonville.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
Is it just me or do you remember when you were young? Do you remember that place you used to hang out with your friends? Do you remember seeing the Iron Horses go by? Do you remember the vibration you felt through your shoes as the big Steel monsters you admired shook the ground ?
I do. For those reasons my brother and I modeled railroading....... For those reasons we always went back to see them again....... Couldn't get enough.
For ours it was the Green Machines. The high speed Burlington Northerns racing down the tracks. three tracks wide.
Two loaded taconite pellet drags coming in and one empty leaving.......or vica versa.
It was something to see, it sure was grand.
Do you have any memories to share of your youth ? Memories like this ?
If so please do share
Remember
Track fiddler
PS I will post a picture of The Old Trestle. Under it was once three tracks when old school economy was once strong and how it is only one track today.
PS again. Happy turkey day all. I am hitting the highway in the morning as we are going to family in Wisconsin.
Wish you all the best. Your family and you.
Holiday cheers