Hi!
I usually post in the model railroading forum, but thought I would join you all for a bit…
My avatar is a pretty fair HO scale model of my Grandmom’s house in Anna Illinois - as it was in the 1950s. It took me a few months of evenings to finish, as it is a kitbash of two kits (hip roofs are rare in the model world), and a whole lot of scratchbuilt details added.
The house sits at the end of Grove Avenue (#205), with the IC “racetrack” a stones throw away. We lived in Chicago, and would make a couple trips a year in the '50s to see “Mom” - which I confess meant “watching trains” to me. The house was 2 bedroom, 1 living room, and a kitchen. The “bath” was a two holer behind the house, and until the mid-50s water was pumped out back. Heat was from a coal burning pot bellied stove, and the cookstove burned wood and corncobs. How in the world Mom could make those wonderful meals on a stove like that still amazes me.
At the time, there were 4 tracks going by the house - 2 mains, 1 passing siding, and 1 industry siding. Train frequency seemed to be about 1 an hour, and the highlight was the brown/orange streamliners that blasted thru town. There were also a lot of GPs pulling mixed freight or coal trains, and up through 1958 steamers were pretty common!
I spent a lot of time trackside, but to be honest, those fast streamliners and monsterous 4-8-2s scared me - so when a train was coming, I backed off quite a bit. I also spent a lot of time on the porch swing, and you could get a pretty good view of the trains, at least until the Wright Brothers put up a mill between the house and the tracks.
My closest encounter was with an 0-8-0 switcher that was moving some cars around, and it was like a huge powerful beast - sort of scary - but captivating at the same time.