Back when I was four or five years old, I remember seeing long strings of tank cars on a low viaduct at the west end of Casper, WY, waiting just outside the gates of the Standard Oil Refinery. That's always stuck with me.
Mark P.
Website: http://www.thecbandqinwyoming.comVideos: https://www.youtube.com/user/mabrunton
Growing up in New York City I suppose you could say my earliest memories of trains was riding with my mom on what was then the GG line in those old black trains with wicker seats and open fans.
Then I remember Dad taking us to Florida on the Seaboard Coast Line in 1970 just before Amtrak was born.
Joe Staten Island West
Earliest memories . . . lying in bed on a still, humid, Windsor Ontario night listening to the trains that were a mile or so away. Diesels 'loodleing' (my word at a young age). Steam engines making that strange sound as they huffed under load then huffed faster and faster. (I never knew then what wheel slip was.)
Somewhat later memories . . . driving by the yards at the waterfront and being enthralled by the train ferries between Windsor and Detroit.
Thanks for starting this, it gets an old guy's nostalgic juices flowing.
Pantherphil, greetings from another Lehigh alum. BSEE '88.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
The GM&O tracks ran thru the small rural town of Pearl,IL. In the mid 1940s steam trains would stop at the depot and my father wanted me to get closer to the noisy engine.I was 5 or so years old and afraid of these snorting and hissing beasts. Would love to see a steam engine stop there today.
My earliest is a trip to the IRM (Illinois railway museum).
I rember running through the hood on a locomotive and my dad telling me not to, then I slammed my head on a pipe and fell down. Needless to say my dad was right.
I also remeber me and him riding our bikes up to the metra station and Watching the 6pm from chicago pullin before heading to the new metra yard/facility. I wish I rember more because the Wisconsin Central was still around a few years after i was born (1999)
Probably 1956 when my Dad set up our Lionel Lines train platform in our house in West Chester PA. I was 6 and would have had some exposure to Pennsylvania and Reading Operations in Chester County Pennsylvania as my Dad was a consultant to town governments and would frequently take us on rides throughout the region.
In 1959 we took a Reading Rail Ramble behind a steam locomotive. I would have been 8. Highlights of course were the photo opportunities when the passengers dismounted for a ride by. At that time we had moved to Willow Grove in Montgomery County and my Dad road the Reading into Philadelphia. We lived about a block from the commuter line. We were also within reach of the Pennsy Trenton Cut off to Harrisburg which paralleled the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Lots of train action on that line including GG-1s, my all time favorite locomotive. In 1964-65 I went on a Boy Scout expedition to Philmont with Valley Forge Council BSA. We traveled by train from Valley Forge to Chicago and Denver and return. In the declining days of passenger rail but a great adventure for a 13 year old. During college days at Lehigh University I regularly rode the Reading from Glenside to Bethlehem on an RDC. Again the declining days of passenger rail. I was often the only passenger on the Sunday evening return trip. Still remember pulling into the abandoned and decaying passenger station and taking the long walk up South Mountain to Lehigh's campus. Early days of law school in 1972 my newly wed wife and I usually took the Amtrak Night Owl from South Station Boston to Philadelphia, often with our pup in the baggage car, for major holidays. My wife did not like to leave the dog alone so the conductors and brakemen often let us ride with them in the baggage car. They were great sharing food and drinks. The Night Owl was a pretty run down overnight train, almost always running late. But great memories all the same.
Good topic,
I grew up along the IC/ICG Mattoon to Evansville line that was originally the Peoria, Decatur and Evansville. In fact it split my great grandparents farm around 1881 when it was built. There were four trains a day best I remember, one early in the morning and one late in the evening, so I woke up to the sound of trains and went to bed with the sound of trains. The other two were around noon and early evening.
What I saw most was the black Green Diamond geeps until the orange and white paint scheme came along. I really fell in love the first time I saw my first Paducah rebuilt GP8/10. I remember as a kid standing trackside and waving to the locomotive and caboose crews and always getting a friendly wave and smile back. I also remember picking blackberries along the fence rolls trackside and hunting rabbits in the trackside brush during season. Those were good days.
Thanks,
Ralph
I always thought that my earliest train memory was riding the Mopacs Texas Eagle from New Braunfels TX back to San Antonio with my kindergarten class in 1966 at 6 years of age. However, I have had a vague but vivid memory for all my life of looking out a window sill about chest high at night and in the near distance seeing big blocky red locomotives under bright lights.
My Dad's father worked for the MKT RR for 47 years. He retired in 1964 when I was 4. When my mother passed away I was going through her pictures when I found a picture of me playing on the porch of the house my grandparents lived in from Smithville TX right before he retired. Well my wife and I went down to Smithville the next weekend and found the house and bam, its living room window in front has a view of the ex MKT now UP yard about 50 yards away. That has to be the memory of seeing MKT Deramus painted Gp7's idling in the yard. I had to have been no more than 4.
I also remember looking through page after page of his MKT employee magazines in Lockhart after he retired. I still wish my grandmother had kept those. I did get all of the rest of his MKT memorabilia and those are the only things missing. Yes I do model the MKT and the Mopac now.
SB
December 21, 1949. I was 12 years old when I saw my first train. My Mother, 3 year old brother and Mel boarded the Union Pacific City of Los Angles in Salt Lake City in route to El Paso TX. We were delayed 19 hours on Donor Pass in snow, it took that long for a Snow Blower to clear the tracks of the snow.We missed our connection with the Southern Pacific Golden State and spent the night in LA. We boarded the Golden State in LA on the 23rd and arrived in El Paso in the evening. In El Paso we lived three city blocks from the SP northbound tracks so I spent my teens watching the monster SP articulateds and the Golden State coming and going. Mel My Model Railroad http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/ Bakersfield, California I'm beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.
In 1955-56, I was in grade three in Wellington Ontario. From my desk I could look out and see steam powered iron ore trains go by. I remember seeing the smoke come out of the stack and blow ahead of the train.
Besides the models at home - I have an 8mm silent movie of me at age 2 running a train around the Christmas tree - I would say going to Strasburg:
I think that's Summer 1970. #4 was already parked in the middle of the grounds (on the other side of that caboose). Can't imagine it to look back, that my Dad only lived another 5 years past this.
I am glad some memories are coming back.
Seeing and traveling by trains was never a big thing when I was young. We used to travel by bus.
Having said that another ingrained memory was 1951? I was visiting family in Northumberland. For some reason we went to a little village called Shankhouse. Why I never knew. Anyway, I was outside a house 'playing'. Across the road was open field. Tall, straw-like grass was the view.
Suddenly plumes of smoke rising from the grass could be seen. Slowly it made its way from left to right. A gap in the tall grass brught into view an elderly (what I now know) 0.6.0 steam engine pulling a number of (also) elderly coal wagons.
It stopped. Somebody got off the engine (fireman). He walked back along the line looking at the wagons. At one of them he grasped the underframe and lifted the errant wagon back on the track.
Boarding the engine again the train slowly left the scene.
The railway line closed in 1953.
David
To the world you are someone. To someone you are the world
I cannot afford the luxury of a negative thought
My Grandmother lived two blocks away from the East River in Brooklyn and nearby was the docks and BEDT.I can remember seeing steam engine running in the street aroung 1960.Thats why I have always had a soft spot for Varney Docksiders
NorthBritThe one that is the earliest in my memory is ---------------
Real railroad, the SOO Line, at my grandpa's farm, spending the night, summer time, bedroom windows open, house about 2500 ft. (Google maps) from the main line between Fond du Lac WI., and Chicago. Now owned by the CN, and VERY active. I was about 12?
Model railroad: Coming home from the Christmas Eve service at church, to a Marx train set running around the Christmas tree, i was about 6.
Mike.
My You Tube
In the pre-interstate days of the mid '50s my family would drive from Louisville, KY to my grandparents homes in Joliet, IL. US 31 to Indianapolis then US 52 to Joliet. Seemed like there was a railroad crossing every few miles. Best were the NKP crossings that still had steam engines.
My first train ride was an elementary school field trip on the L&N from Louisville Union Station to Lebanon Junction and return.
Ray
When I was about 3yrs old, my parents were driving somewhere near St Marys, KS. Along that stretch of highway, the road parallels the UP Kansas Division tracks. We had caught up to a steam locomotive and were matching it for a few minutes. There was fire, smoke, steam, and it had large wheels with these steel sticks (driver tie rods and piston rods) going up and down. I was fascinated by it. Later, we were living over a hardware store for a couple of months while my parents found a place to rent. From the roof top, I once saw what i now think was a 2-8-0 going back and forth (switching). The result is Ive been fascinated with trains ever since.
Jim (with a nod to Mies Van Der Rohe)
NorthBritWhat are your memories of Railways 'when you were a young'un'?
Great stories here.
My earliest memory was going out west when I was 8 years old to watch the Freedom Train go by pulled by the GS-4.
I think we saw it four times.
We did not tour the train for a few more months when it finally came to Florida.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
My dad took me to the Hampton Avenue overpass at the (then CNW) Butler yard in northwest Milwaukee near where I grew up. In those days you could stand on the overpass and watch action down in the yard looking north from Hampton.
Later it became a UP yard (4014 came thru the yard on its travel across country last year) and recently it has scaled back from what I've heard.
Anyway, I bet I was 6 or 7 maybe, late 70s. Also around this time, we took a trip to North Freedom, WI to view CNW 1385 on display.
After these experiences I was hooked and started modeling back then. We also had a neighbor who modeled HO for the CNW and that helped light the fire of interest.
https://www.jsonline.com/story/communities/northwest/news/butler/2019/02/05/butler-yard-reduces-workforce-and-closes-its-mechanical-shop/2771827002/
Andy
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Milwaukee native modeling the Milwaukee Road in 1950's Milwaukee.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/196857529@N03/
PMR mentioned "real memories" I had my tonsils out at age 2 (quite young even by 1953 standards) I remember playing with Tonka toys in the pre and post of visit and for almost 20 years afterward, I remember being held down while the surgeon came at me with my mothers' sewing pinking shears. That couldn't have happened.
We were travelling to my grandparents in PA. We stopped at a crossing and I counted 104 freight cars pulled by double headed steam. The next time I saw a steam engine I was 20 years old.
I still have the time table from my first train trip to NYC. I will see if I can find it and scan it.
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
My oldest memories are too long gone to be remembered. Sadly, because of that, i do not know what my 'real' first memories are.
One memory i do have, and refuse to let go of is my very first ride. Its pretty much my oldest memory, that i DO remember.
It starts the night before. My parents had remarked that tomarow was gonna be a special day - we were gonna take a 'train ride' with a 'steam engine'. My younger brother and I couldnt have been older than 4 and 6 respectively. Mom would chase while me, brother, and dad rode the train.
Our part of the trip was from fRednecksburg to Richmond. Behind none other than SR 4501. I remember the trip, and more over i remember Richmond station extra vividly.
Why, because at 6yrs old, not knowing a dad gum thing about trains yet, that breathing, belching, hissing, monster of a locomotive scared the bejeebers out of me. To make it really a nightmarish/stick with you forever type of thing, dear ole Dad wanted pictures. He snapped while I, lil ole I, had to stand next to that thing.
It is the only time in my life i have EVER been afraid of anything railroad. I can still feel the fear. I remember that all i wanted to do was get away from that thing! How ironic now, huh? Dad kept reassuring me it was ok... get closer - get closer.
All those noises. I didnt know she was just breathing just as i was. Standing pretty so a kid like me could get his photo taken. To make this more poiniant(sp), I have never seen those pictures to this day. No one knows what happened to them. I have never ever seen them. Except for our collective memories of the event, we cant prove it ever happened. (Parents!)
Im sure dear ole dad developed them, but i went through all that, and never got to see what could be technically called my first "Railfan" event. Im pretty sure i was hooked then, because it was all i could do to stay on dads leash during the day.
I can pretty much also state this is where i became a Railfan as right after the picture taking ordeal, an SW type switcher came in and pulled the train out of station. This marked the end of the day for us with the exception of the trip back home to F'Burg.
It marked my beginning as a Railfan because i could not fathom why such a tiny locomotive was pulling this huge one, plus a train. I wanted answers! And so, my story begins......
PMR
Can't place an actual "first memory". My parents moved to a house across the street from the Minneapolis Northfield & Southern's "high line" about 7 years before I was born, so I saw trains virtually every day until I moved away many years later. I was born in 1958; until the railroad bought it first EMD switchers in 1962 the railroad was all Baldwin (on the high line, DRS 6-6-1500, VO-1000 / VO-660) except for one Fairbanks-Morse H-10-44 and one FM H-12-44. Cabooses were red wood cabooses that had the cupola removed, and a small sidewindow (I think they actually used all-weather windows designed for diesel locomotive cabs) to make it a sort-of bay-window car. Thursday mornings I went with my Mom to her ladies bowling league at Diamond Lake Lanes in Minneapolis, waiting in the childcare area while she bowled. The lanes were across the street from the end of the line for the branchline, and the crew tied up there and walked across the street to eat at the bowling alley. Although they used diesels, they still dressed like steam crews with denim jackets, overalls, gloves etc.
Weekdays they ran a second train, usually around 5 PM. I would wave at them, and when it got dark early I would flash the porch light at them and they would blow the whistle (they used Hancock Air Whistles, not airhorns). One evening a little before Xmas 1963, the train stopped in front of my house, and the trainmen came up to the house and gave me a railroad flashlight (the kind with a long red tube for signalling) so I could wave that at them at night.
My dad told me that when we took a family vacation to the Swiss Alps, I watched mesmorized by watching the electric cars move around the yard. He said I'd do nothing but observe. Want to keep me quiet? Allow me to enjoy trains!
1955, I was seven years old, staying with my grandparents for a week in April at our bungalow colony in Highview, NY. We drove down the hill to the O&W train station to pick up a package, and I marveled at the huge F Diesel deeply growling in the fog and rain as it waited to pull its cars through the tunnel to points north. The station is now a marvelous remodeled private residence. -Rob
In the summer, our family would go swimming at a cove in northern New Jersey.
Near the picnic area, there was a row of trees and a train track. I used to love waiting for the train, which you could clearly see beyond the trees.
I'm guessing this may have been PRR/Penn Central or B&O track at the time. I wonder if the track is still there.
Fortunately, my earliest train memories are preserved on video produced from 8 mm home movies my parents shot. The trains are in the Panama Canal Zone and it's 1960. There are scenes with me on a stuffed and mounted steam loco, along with some other shots along the line and at a station that abuts an Air Force airfield (I think this was Albrook AFB).
The video is here:
Train scenes and a ride start about 4 minutes in.
Mike Lehman
Urbana, IL
I was rwo years old when my parents moved out to Long Island from New York City. At that point he started taking the Long Island Railroad to work. I remember the station. It was on a stub-end siding.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
I grew up in Phoenixville, PA. To get to my aunt's house, we had to drive by the Phoenix Steel Corporation, and would have to stop as the slag train would cross the roadway. For me it was always great - I got to see trains.
Anytime we reached a closed crossing gate, we would count the cars.