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.
–Randy
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.
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.
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
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
My late mom claimed that when she pushed me in my stroller (early 1950s) on the bridge over the LIRR tracks in Elmhurst Queens, I would pick up my head in excitement at the commotion caused by a train passing underneath. Just several years later, perhaps 4 or 5 years old, after we had moved out on the “Island”, my dad had to return to his work place in Brooklyn to pick up his paycheck which he had accidentally left in his locker. He took me with him and gave me my first real memories of railroads as we waited on the platform at the then ground level Hicksville station of the LIRR, for a train into the City. I still have memories of a steam engine sitting alone on a side track, making noises that made it seem like it was possessed by demons. Steam was probably discontinued on the LIRR within months.
Just a couple of years later we were off to Clinton Iowa to visit my Great Grandmother via the Pennsylvania RR to Chicago and then the C & NW to Clinton. I remember the dark and somewhat spooky confines of the Penn Station platform level (somethings never change). The original majestic Penn Station would have been still there in all of its glory but I have no memories of the train shed itself. We took the all coach Trailblazer to Chicago. I recall being given a dining car menu that resembled a passenger train car. One other thing I do recall was that evening my parents took us to the observation/club car. For whatever reason, it was at the front of the train. In what I later learned was Harrisburg PA, I watched through the rear window while the GG1 was swapped for E units for the rest of the trip to Chicago. The rest in pretty vague but I know we had to kill hours in Chicago before we could get the rare C & NW train to Clinton. I also recall having to get up an ungodly hour in the morning to catch the likewise rare train back to Chicago.
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
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)
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.
Pantherphil, greetings from another Lehigh alum. BSEE '88.
–Randy
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.
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.
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.