Wow this has been a busy week-- make that a busy month!!! What year is this? I just looked up and it seemed like the whole world has been rushing past. I guess I gotta get out more…
Which brings me to the subject of today’s post: Where do you go when you gotta get away? Where are some of your favorite rail-fanning spots? Where do you go to get prototype inspiration? And, aside from a camera-- which I think we’d all agree would be surprising if you left without it-- what all do you take with you on your inspirational trips? What are some of your more memorable jaunts? And feel free to post some photos too! Maybe I can spot somewhere nice that I can con–er, convince my wife into going… Not worried about the kids, if there are trains involved, they’re in!
As always, looking forward to hearing your thoughts and opinions.
My favorite spot so far in railfanning is the Folkston Funnel. I grew up about 50 miles north of Folkston in a small town that saw almost just as many trains come through so I got to see plenty of trains growing up and it was before Folkston built the area for the rail fans. Living here in Portland, Or now there are several great spots to see trains (BNSF/UP) but they are just creeping long which is ok but to see a CSX train coming ripping through at speed is blast. Now when I go back to see the family I make an effort to go down to Folkston for a few hours and get my fill of CSX trains.
When we “gotta get out of Dodge” we like t go to Steamtown National Historic Park and watch them play with the 1:1 steamers. We have gone on each of their excursions, so we don’t need to do that anymore, but we like to watch them get the steamers ready for hte day’s activities and run them out and consist trains.
We Also love to go to Strasburg Railroad and the Railroad Museum of PA in Strasburg PA. It is a little farthur and requires at least one overnight stay in a motel, but we enjoy it for sure. We like to do the lunch or dinner train and get the Rail Baron’s Pass to ride the train a few times and visit the museum. It also includes the noon shop tour which is GREAT.
We WERE hoping to go somewhere in Connecticut, where you ride a steam train to a steam boat, take a ride up the river and the steam train back, real 1800s like, but this summer means no vacation [:'(] SO maybe next year.
WE would also dearly love to go to Cass Scenic Railroad in W VA. WE will stop at Strasburg as the half way point.
Call me lucky, but when I need to get away for some time, I just have to step outside my door, walk about 100 yards and I am right next to the main line connecting Hamburg and Bremen with a couple of hundred train moves each day. Metronom commuter trains in their attractive yellow and blue livery, ICE trains and a tremendous variety of freight trains, pulled by German, Swedish, Danish, Swiss and a number of privately owned locos - does take about an hour to watch all these pass by. During summer weekends, there may be also a few steam powered railfan special trains passing by. Ideal spot to get your mind onto other things … [swg]
I used to live right beside the tracks in Southwest VA-- beside the N&W (I guess NS now) tracks in Abingdon, VA. Just down the way from the famous “Virginia Creeper” that ran over to West Jefferson, though that bit was before my arrival there. It was fun to have the trains rushing past my house almost so close I could reach out and touch them. Usually every Saturday morning around 6am or so, there would be a freight train parked in my back yard and that was always fun. There was no fence or anything so I could walk right up to the cars to check 'em out. The tracks were probably no more than 50 feet from the house. I remember when we first hooked up our new big screen & surround sound system. We were watching some fighter plane / blow-stuff-up movie and my wife said something like “that’s so realistic” and I said, “No, that’s a train!” [(-D]
John - I have to confess that there were thoughts of dumping the mini-module I am currently working on onto the tracks and watch it getting “freight-trained”, but as i have now seemingly found a way to improve it, I won´t have these thoughts anymore - promised [(-D]
Canyon Hot Springs is in the Selkirk range just on the Eastern side of the Rockies. It’s a great camp ground and the CPR mainline curves around the campground. Watching those monsters grinding their way up towards the continental divide sends shivers down my spine.
Canyon Hot Springs use to be a pusher station and the hot springs were discovered by the Rail crews and they built the first pools out of railroad ties. There are lots of ghost to seek out between Canyon Hot Springs and Banff as the original rail bed from the 1880s is very accessible. If you want to hike short distances off the highway you can see the remains of snowsheds and trestles. The spiral tunnels are a little further away and three trains an hour is not uncommon. The Stoney creek bridge is to the East. This is the highest rail bridge in North America.
Walking along the 125 year old original rail bed. The five mile long Connaught and nine mile long Mt. Macdonald tunnels are far below our feet along this section. Here I send the kids on ahead to check for Grizzly bears.
The remains of snowshed #16
The view from our Rum and Coke refueling station is not as magnificent as the Rockies down the road but the train watching makes up for it.
At night so far away from any civilization, the Milky Way is clearly defined as is our spot in it. The hot pools help one relax in the evening after a good day of exploring. Don’t forget your mountain bike there are miles and miles of roads and trails along the mainline.
Getting away from it all to me means doing something completely different. In Utah, that can include a lot of options. Usually i just comment to my wife that I need a change of pace and the next thing I know, we’re in the “something completely different” mode - doing something in the city, country, or Utah’s “outback” (uninhabited desert/prarie).
My favorite railfanning/railroad inspration spot is the 140 miles of restored transcontinental railroad roadbed that runs from Promontory Summit (Golden Spike) to the Nevada state line. This stretch of track became obsolete when the causeway across the Great salt Lake opened just after the turn of the last century. There was local traffic on it until it was abandoned around 1940 (the rails were pulled up and used as material to support the WWII war effort).
It is an amazing stretch of driveable trail (4wd required). The rails are long gone, but the trestles culverts, and roadbed remain. Because this is the stretch west of the Golden Spike, the wood pieces of the railroad (trestles, culverts, etc.) are made of redwood from California, so they stand up to decay fairly well. As you drive, you can still see the roadbed for occasional wyes and sidings. There are signs telling where towns and sidings used to be, and at a couple of town-sites you can still see little indications of what once was. At the town of Terrace, for example, there is a circular depression that was once a turntable pit, and you can see bricks embedded in the soil in the shape of roundhouse stalls. The last time I was there, there was a recognizeable piece of a 19th century locomotive pilot.
I’m convinced that very little has changed since the crew from California laid the original track. The settlements that grew along the track have been mostly recovered by the desert. Terrace was once a town of 4,000 people, but there is almost nothing left there, now. The cemeteries show s
Well, since I’m only 17 and have been driving for a little over a month, I’ve only been “real” railfanning once so far. Of course, this doesn’t include when I would stop at the station or yard on the way somewhere.
In late June, I was visiting Lehigh University in Bethlehem, PA, and forced my parents to take me to NS’s Allentown Yard.
I went down to South Jersey with a group of fans from another to-remain-unnamed forum and we explored the Southern Railroad of New Jersey in Winslow:
We also stopped at Tuckahoe to meet Tony Macrie, the owner of the Cape May Seashore lines:
I’m working with some of the guys from that trip to get something together in a few weeks. No plans have actually been made yet, but a few ideas that have come up so far are something along NS’s Lehigh Line, chasing NS’s H-02 out of Dover, NJ (home of NS 3010), and chasing NYSW SU-99. Those have all been things that I’ve been interested in doing for a while, but have been unable to do until now. Whatever happens, I’ll be sure to have photos! [swg]
Mom and I have a favorite place, called Dove Cottage.
Located in Madison Indiana. (Limo not included, but the house behind it is) Trains? The only tracks are in North Madison,
(Yes, that’s Indiana)
and usually not running on the weekends, we do however have the Ohio River, and at one time, Madison was the south terminal for the first real railroad in Indiana. (Those horsecarts in Shelbyville can shoveit’).
Oh, and we have a Grade. You might have heard of it.
Mostly, we get away to get away, bt Trains and History go so well together, and it’s the two things Mom and I love.
For railfanning I have a ton of places to go. Living less then 2 miles from the CN and CP tracks is great. I can see the top of a CP train right now cruzin through the little town I live in. Most of my favorite spots are east of town on the CN right of way. I can ride my ATV to almost every spot I like to go to. Another great spot is the Belleville Ontario VIA station. There is a yard right beside it and most of the time the trains go by nice and slow, it makes for great videos. If I want to get away I’ll jump on the VIA to Montreal with the wife and party it up there and come back the next day. Sometimes we will take the ONR train to North Bay for the weekend. Depends on my mood…and where the wife want’s to go, lol.
I’m a bit of a grouch, enough that my mom once told me I don’t know how to have fun. My girlfriend says I always look happier when there’s a train going by, so she lets me indulge. A lot.
I don’t really have a favorite place, but there’s a few spots I like:
Area around CP Bloom just west of Penn Station in Pittsburgh. That junction is my layout. Its impossible to see it from the same POV as my layout, except from the Capitol Limited.
On the other side of Pittsburgh, the old PRR tracks are in a trench through West Park.
The WMATA Blue line from Van Dorn to King Street (Alexandria VA) and the Yellow Line from King Street to Reagan National and across the Potomac. It parallels the CSX and NS tracks and crosses the Potomac. Theres always something there. I love pacing an Amtrak train around Eisenhower.
The immediate area around the old station in Kingsport TN.
Like I said, the girlfriend is really nice about this stuff. We were driving back home from TN to DC and stopped in Roanoke. We got off the interstate and headed overland on the old highways, stopping in little railroad towns and anywhere we saw tracks with something interesting. I really should have taken way more pictures. We’re heading out of town on vacation soon and she is letting us take the Palmetto to South Carolina. She lets me take the train almost anywhere these days. Its easy from DC I guess.
Funny you should use the word “haunts.” Most of my favorite trains, railroads and operations are ghosts. I keep an eye out for things that used to be, to reconstruct in my imagination. Last week on a trip to Philadelphia to see a 14-year-old granddaughter I haven’t seen in 13 years, I was exploring on foot.
While walking up 21st street past the back of the Rodin Museum, I noticed a depression that went down some 20 feet or more below street level and took up about a third of a block. This was between 21st, Hamilton, and 22nd, across the street from a police department district station. Cars including police vehicles were parked at the weedy bottom of the depression, and at the far end from my view on 21st was what appeared to be a stone tunnel portal, with rock and dirt rubble filling the tunnel. A tunnel and cut about the right size for a train.
The alignment behind the camera POV seemed to go towards the back of the Community College on Spring Garden St
When I want to get away and rail fan I follow the old Rio Grande line from Provo to Helper, Utah. Though there isn’t much Rio Grande left of the line it’s still wonderful scenery and beautiful area’s to sit by and watch trains. I’m also into ghost towns, abandoned mines, and antique structures, all of which are abundant somewhat along the route if you know where to search.
I have NJ Transit just down the hill. All I have to do is walk one mile to the Boonton Station since I don’t have a driver’s licence [:'(]. A train goes by every 45 minutes on week days. And by the way, I’m lucky enough that when my dad and I go to the hobby shop we drive by the old DL&W main line. Sorry, don’t have any pictures.
I’ve got several out here in Northern California, mostly on the I-80 corridor paralleling the ex-Southern Pacific Donner Pass line. One of my favorites is near Donner Pass itself, on old US 40 from Norden to Truckee, where the highway largely parallels the original 1867 mainline over the summit. The original line is now out of service, but the concrete snowsheds and right of way are still pretty intact (rumor has it that UP is going to restore the line–eventually) and is a pretty popular hiking trail. The view is spectacular (2000 foot drop-off). The railroad now uses a 2-mile tunnel somewhat to the south of the Pass to cross the summit, but train watching on the line is a lot better than it used to be, since UP ‘notched’ a lot of tunnels on the Donner route to clear double-stack trains. It’s turning back into the busy mountain railroad that I grew up with. Much heavier grades than UP’s Feather River crossing to the north, but a lot quicker through the mountains.
I live less than a mile from the Woodstock Road crossing of the B&O’s Old Main Line, and I see several CSX trains go by there every month when I’m commuting. And I can hear their horns blowing from my house just about anytime. Only problem is that nowadays, my free time is so scarce I rarely, if ever, go to anyplace by myself for the sole purpose of watching trains. I generally use that time to make progress on building on my new layout [which is sort of an escape in itself!].
But in my teenage years as soon as I got my drivers license, my favorite railfanning hangout was the B&O’s North Avenue (NA) Tower near the uphill end of the Howard Street Tunnel under Baltimore. I befriended one of the operators there and he would let me hang out with him in the tower during his shift [or “trick” in RR jargon?]. At least one of every three Eastbound trains would have helpers pushing at the rear, usually 1st-generation Geeps and/or F units hammering away at Notch-8. [Ahhh… life was good back then! [8-|]] I would also regularly drop by the B&O’s Riverside engine terminal near Fort McHenry to see what type of exotic motive power might be there at a given moment. If I wanted to see some upgrade action with horns blowing at a crossing, I could go to the Old Main Line town of Sykesville, MD. I’d plan my trips there by first stopping at HX Tower in Halethorpe, where the tower operator would tell me when the next Westbound was headed that way.
Today the interlocking towers are gone, and railroad security has gotten so extreme (especially after 9/11) that nobody could hope to do the type of train chasing I did back in the 1970’s. Maybe that’s another reason I don’t go railfanning these days: I’ve been spoiled! [sigh]
(Yes, that’s Indiana)
