Just as a change of topic, what is everyone’s first train related memory? Mine would be a railroad museum about 30 years ago in Michigan. I don’t even remember the name of the place but it would be in southwest or southern Michigan not too far from Grand Rapids.
I have told this story here before… a brief recap is that when I was about 3 and a half years old, we were waiting for my Dad to arrive by bus and a steam locomotive “jumped out” from behind the bus station, blowing the whistle and belching steam out “and under the car”, scaring me “airborne” (with a scream of “MOMMY!”), landing in Granddad’s lap. Been fascinated by steam locomotives ever since… some people ride a roller coaster or go bungee jumping to get their adrenaline up; I go stand near a steamer! (I am now 67 and it still works!)
The other thing is that on trips to visit Grandparents, we often took a route that was on a city street that had a 1 block jog around a rail yard and that one block was between two sets of multiple RR tracks and the tracks were often busy with multiple trains (passenger trains at a station and freights at freight houses on the other side of the street). I remember seeing the engineers, conductors and other workmen comparing watches and signaling each other with flags and lanterns (and in particular, a “car toad” swatting the wheels of a passenger car with a long funny looking hammer). These people I perceived as doing “adult work in the adult world” and I admired them and it gave me the “vision” of what it was to be like when I was an adult. Although I never worked for a RR, the perception of their dedication and efficiency is what guided my work life as an adult.
My first memory is of taking a class trip from the Yonkers, NY station (the one on the NYC Hudson Line in downtown Yonkers) to Albany, NY to see the state capital and government buildings on a class trip in (IIRC) about sixth or seventh grade…it was a day trip so we left early and returned late but the rest of the trip is a bit of a blur to me now these many, many years later. That would have been about 1962 or 1963.
This is really going to date me, but if the Driver doesn’t mind…
Circa 1950 - in a '38 Buick at the yard office (CB&Q) watching the turntable, a huge steam whistle overhead. Time for lunch - blow the whistle. I think I put a dent in the roof of the Buick. Then 12:20 end of lunch and another dent.
Don’t need pictures of the Buick, turntable, yard office or whistle. Remember them all very clearly!
My first ride on the rails was on the Eldorado streetcar line of the Altoona and Logan Valley Electric Railway. We lived at the end of the line, which was at 6th Avenue and 58th Street. My mother told me that I was thrilled.
When I was somewhere between the first and fourth grade, I don’t remember exactly when, my grandfather took me on a train ride from Altoona to Tyrone and back. We went up to Tyrone in the late afternoon or early evening and came back after a short layover in Tyrone. The eastbound train, which actually runs northeast from Altoona to Tyrone, probably was The New Englander, and the westbound train probably was the Manhattan Limited. Those were the days when Altoona saw between 35 and 40 passenger train movements a day.
As it turned out, and as I remember it, on the way back to Altoona I met one of my school chums who was returned home from Philadelphia. I have never forgotten the experience. It probably had a lot to do with turning me into a lifelong rail buff.
First memories of trains? Not sure, exactly, but one of the following:
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A C&NW steam-powered scoot which my father rode daily to Chicago as a commuter.
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A CA&E (the 3rd Rail) morning train with my mother to go to Marshall Fields in the Loop.
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The Empire Builder stopping down at the depot in Aurora.
I’m too young to remember passenger trains. The Milwaukee Road used to run about a half mile from our house, on the line running east out of Rapid City, S.D. The freights were usually short, but took a long time to pass, as the tracks were really bad in the 70’s. A couple years ago, I found that the tracks are still in place, for the most part. The track looks to be about 60# rail on top of splinters, held together with tumbleweeds.
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My first memories would be watching trains from our living-room window when I was two or so. The tracks were about a third of a mile away, but the view was unobstructed for about 15 carlengths (long enough to see entire freight and passenger trains a lot of the time).
I was scared of trains close-up–they made a lot of noise. The horn was the worst, but I didn’t like the sounds of diesels above idle, cars being coupled, air hoses separating, or anything like that. I remember my dad lifting me up and putting me inside a box car spotted at one of the local lumber companies. Not good…
By the time I was in kindergarten, I was drawing pictures of trains–mostly rectangles with four wheels underneath each car. I remember getting corrected by my kindergarten teacher when the lesson was to draw a train. She had wanted a steam locomotive, similar to the graphic in the Monopoly game, but I had an engine (BL2, because that’s what I knew), box car, and tank car by the time she got to me. I had redeemed myself by first grade…we were supposed to draw the specified number of objects in each of six boxes on a sheet of paper, so I drew one train snaking over the entire page, with the correct number of cars in each.
It wasn’t until I was in about the fourth grade that I could tolerate being close enough to trains to enjoy them. I was in sixth grade when I was given my first copy of Trains. A year and a half later I had a paper route, and could buy my own. Thus began my secondary education (something other than encyclopedia references) about railroads.
My first was in 1958 and I was 9 years old. My mother took my brother and I to Midland Texas to visit her relatives.
We left from San Francisco and when arrived in Los Angeles, switched trains for the ride to El Paso then to Midland.
I remember the layout of the passenger cars we were in to this day. I’m sure I saw other engines both steam and diesel and rolling stock before this as we lived close to the SP line from San Jose to San Francisco. I can remember all kinds of railroad stuff from after the trip.
My first realisiation of the awsome power of trains at 7 yrs.age was in Washington Court House, Ohio. We were at the Railroad “beanery” across the street from PRR depot.There was a diamond by the station for C&O to cross over , . We were eating breakfast and Freidasaid to hold onto the dishes as there was a train coming. OK , Ithought she was kidding me. She was not. The building sat just off the right of way. the joint started vibrating , WOW !! . That startled me, Dad just grined . The train engine cleared the street then hit the diamond, oh boy! , noise - dust- and paper in the air and smoke. Freida just laughted. After that , many times I enjoyed that event. They are still evergreen in my mind.
Cannonball[:)]
Dad was a Asst. Trainmaster at a small town in Ohio for my first memories - being taken down to the Dispatchers Office and seeing the dispatchers with their tinted visors, arm garters and quill fountan pens and the Train Sheets - bigger than any piece of paper I had ever seen. Being on the station platform as freights chuged past with steam power bellowing under their tonnage burden.
Going to the depot to meet the daily passenger run that had a Dining Car to get the ‘care packages’ that were sent from my Grandfather who was head of the Dining Car Dept.
Later moving to a Division point in Indiana, watching Train Dispatcher with even bigger Train Sheets - bigger than their desks. Watching the passing traffic on a high volume double track operation - Premiere streamlined passenger trains, ordinary heavyweight passenger trains, mail trains with just a rider coach and steam power. Freights from diesel powered Time Savers to tonnage drags moving as much tonnage as possible behind as little power as possible from one terminal to the next. Local Freights in both directions operating with two cabooses and most normally steam power.
Riding the passenger trains with my mother - eating in the diner - the order having to be hand written by the ordering party, demitasse coffee, finger bowls and napkins after the dinner meal.
I could go on an on - riding through Pittsburgh when the Steel City had mills on both side of the river providing a night time light shows to rival any fireworks display. Going to the Club Car leaving Cumberland and hearing both diesel and steam power struggle in the nightly fight to get a heavy train up Sand Patch Grade. The maze of switches and signals that defined Washington Union Terminal, when viewed from the Observation Car as the train was ba
Those are fantastic memories! Thanks.
My earliest memory was at 33 months, riding the Olympic Hiawatha from Seattle to Mile City - with vague recollection of the train being stopped due to something involving wires - might have been switching in the electric locomotive.
- Erik
I can’t remember ever not having loved trains. Before age 2 we lived in Manhattan (Amsterdam and 114th St.) and I remember being frustrated at not being able to see down into the West Side yards. One particularly great memory is of pacing a lightning-stripe FA that erupted from one of the ‘tunnels’ just as we were passing on the West Side Highway…
We moved to suburban NJ when I was two and a half, and my whole idea of railroading was shaped by the RS-2s and -3s on the Northern RR… which were still in Erie paint when I first saw them. (I still kick myself for not realizing how close the West Shore was, even when I was old enough to have bicycled over, in those days of interesting power…)
My first railroad experience came on my fourth birthday, when I got a cab ride on a CNJ six-motor Alco consist (I believe lead engine 1611; could have been 1614 – I have my father’s movie of this somewhere!). Still remember being frustrated by how hard it was to move the air-brake lever, and being scared by the loud noise of the air release… but greatly enjoying looking through the ‘front top’ cab windows (this was long-hood forward’ to see the Alco smoke rocket out in Run 8…
We would go down to my father’s college in central NJ for football games and reunions, and to Manasquan and Ocean City on the Jersey shore in summer – I remember looking at the cab signals in a sleeping consist of MP54s on the PJ&B, about 1963, and seeing… without comprehending what they were at the time… both Baldwin passenger sharks and GG1s. Interestingly enough, at that age I did recognize the difference between E7s and E8s on the Long Branch, and recognized a pea-soup-green CNJ locomotive as a “Loewy-styled” Fairbanks-Morse…
I believe I hold the ‘record’ for the youngest voluntarily-requested subscription to Trains Magazine… at age 5 (I pestered my mom when a neighbor lady came selling magazine subscriptions; she s
My first train memory? I’m sure I’ve told this story before, but it goes like this…
I was two, maybe three years old, sitting in the front seat of my fathers 1950 Ford, hey no wimpy kiddie car seats back in those days, we were TOUGH! We were at a grade crossing in Bergenfield NJ, and first in line at the gates. I looked out my window and this HUGE steam engine was about to pass in front of us. I can close my eyes and still see it, big, black, headlight on, the “WOOMPF-WOOMPF-WOOMPF” from the smokestack plainly audible. I don’t know where “chug-chug” comes from, steamers really go “woompf”. Oddly, I don’t remember the whistle, which I’m sure was sounding for the grade crossing. Anyway, instead of being frightened I was utterly fascinated. The steam engine seemed more like a gentle giant than a lurking meanace to me.
Anyway, I was nuts about trains after that, until I realized that the steam engines were gone and those unremarkable diesels took their place. It was decades before I became interested in trains again. Diesels just weren’t as fascinating. They were just machines, but that big steam engine seemed ALIVE.
Took me a while to figure out just where this happened, by the way. I knew what I saw and probably where I saw it, but couldn’t nail it down. Then I found out the New York Central ran steam on the West Shore Line as late as 1956. The West Shore ran, and still runs, through Bergenfield. Just so you know, I’m 59.
You know, if there’s enough postings on this thread maybe Kalmbach should make a book out of it!
I grew up in Elizabeth, NJ. My earliest train memories were the commuter trains that used to stop on the former Jersey Central mainline station at Broad Street. Then right above the Jersey Central was the mainine of the PRR.
Always great train watching!
Radford, VA looking out the back windows of our house, likely from my crib. Our house overlooked the west end of the yard and I recall watching N&W steam switchers moving cars around. One time that sticks out they were using either a Y or an A to work the yard instead of the small S class. Shortly after they started using diesels as switchers, GP-9s I believe.
Dad was a railfan and used to take us to see memorable events, like the last steam pushers on Christiansburg Mountain, the last electrics on the Virginian, the last steam excursion being pulled by 611 and 1218 posed at the Radford station while being hauled off for its career as a stationary boiler.
So long ago, about fifty years in fact, and yet I can almost recall my exact feelings of the time. I need a time machine.
Thank you for sharing. It’s awesome to see how many different ways we got the passion for railroads in our blood.
Protecting your child from an automobile accident is “wimpy?”