Railroad memories of your youth

Model Railroader General Discussion (Model Railroader)
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what’s your first train related memory from your youth ?

Mine was from the summer I was 8 , I was sent out one summer afternoon to get the cows in for milking , which meant crossing the PRR tracks that went through the back of the farm . Was when I was about half way to the tracks I heard a steam whistle blowing for the crossing about 1 mile up the track. By this time it was a rare sound , so being a typical kid I forgot about the cows and hurries up to the place where trail crossed the tracks. And low and behold here came a train of steam locos , if memory serves me correct there was around 12 dead locos with the main rods cut off creaking and groaning from lack of maintenance , being led as I remember a 2-10-2 that wasn’t in good shape all rusty , leaking steam all over and lacking paint leading its brothers off to the scrap yard like a judis goat .

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My dad used to take my older brother and me to the train station on Saturdays when we were kids. On one of these occasions, I must have been not older than 4 years, he lifted me up into the cab of a steam engine. When the fireman opened the fire door, I leaped back in fear and landed in a pile of coal. I was covered in coal dust all over! When we got back, my mom had quite a few choice words for my dad!

Trains were very much a part of our daily life in my childhood days. My family didn´t own a car until I was 10, so all our traveling was done by train. Steam was still king and those new electrics were a rare sight. Not only the steam engines are long gone now, but also those “brand new” electrics of the 1950s have made their way to the scrapper for some years now.

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My greatest railroad moment happened for my 14th birthday in 1951, our neighbor was the El Paso SP Yard Super and he arranged for me to ride in the cab of both a Cab Forward and a AC-9. I remember it being very hot and the windows open on the Cab Forward and getting a face full of desert flies at 50MPH

My first was a Lionel train under the Christmas Tree in 1945 at 8 years old.

Mel

My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/

Bakersfield, California

I’m beginning to realize that aging is not for wimps.

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Other than museum visits, my early childhood memories of trains were from the late 90’s through early 2000’s. It was an exciting time to be growing up, in the post merger landscape the Union Pacific mainline through my hometown was full of Southern Pacific, Denver and Rio Grande and CNW power on through trains. Before the neighborhood around us was developed, as a toddler I could go up to the front window of our home and look out in the distance and see the mainline passing through town.

Sadly by the time I was a teenager and able to go out trackside most of the interesting power was gone… Just a few SP and CNW patches and no remains of the DRGW anywhere in sight. A well, at least when I got older I discovered photos such as the ones James Belmont took a few miles away from where I grew up and have been able to relive that era through somebody elses work.

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It was in late 40’s. I was about 5-6 years old. My parents went to visit a friend that lived on the double track main where the Cotton Belt cut through Pine Bluff AR. As I was sitting on the front porch, a huge (to me) steam engine came by blowing smoke and steam then blowing his whistle at the crossing. First train I had ever seens and it was wonderful. I became smitten with trains and have been ever since. In 1950, I got a Lionel train for Christmas. Mounted the track on a sheet of plywood that would slide under my bed for storage but it spent most of its time in the middle of my bedroom. Mom would slide it under the bed while cleaning but I would pull it back out as soon as I got home from school. I still have that Lionel train but have not tried to operate it since the early 60’s when I went off to collage. Ahhhhh…the memories.

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It seemed someone was always coming or going on a train and we were always at the station which was fine with me.

I had many family members that work for the railways CP and CN in both Winnipeg and Revelstoke.

I remember shop talk when we would be visiting my Dads cousins in Revelstoke. They would be discussing Pusher stations and small yards that were located through the Selkirks and Rockies having logistical issues that could not be fixed as the geography of squeezing things in next to the rivers on the side of those massive mountains was virtually impossible to deal with. Even they would admit it wasn’t managements fault.[(-D]

I often think of those conversations when I look at the yard on my layout and blame the unlikely design on the geography of having a tiny layout.[(-D]

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This may not be my earliest memory but it still rates as one of the “top ten”.

My dad would take me to NYC’s Collinwood Yard on the east side of Cleveland, Ohio, where there was a pedestrian stairway with a landing half-way down. We would camp out on this landing for hours and watch the activity, the Buffalo-Chicago, main line of the NYC on one side and the back shops and roundhouse on the other.

At the bottom of the stairway was the west-end crew shanty, caboose track and a small yard tower. One day a crew came rolling up to pick up a caboose with the engine cab right alongside the stairway landing. “Hey kid — you wanna’ ride in an engine?”

I don’t even remember answering back but I sure do remember climbing down those stairs and scrambling up that first, big step of the engine. I think my dad was behind me but in all my recollections I can’t say for sure that he even came along. My eyes were as big as saucers. I know this was around 1963 so that puts me at about age seven.

“You know how to run one of these things?” the engineer said. Still I don’t remember my exact reply but next thing I know I’m pulling the reverser and clicking the throttle out of idle — all the while being coached by the engineer, still in his seat but me on his lap, Santa Claus style.

“You got 'er rolling OK but how 'ya going to stop?” Now, I’m really nervous, not knowing the engineer is smiling and winking to the fireman, and probably my dad, too.

Well, of course, we DID stop — at the other end of the yard, about two miles distant, dropped the caboose wherever it was supposed to go and headed back to the west-end.

To this day I still remember the engine, the 9512. Turns out it was an NW-2 that the NYC bought off the New York, Ontario & Western where she wore number 127.

http://www.rr-fallenflags.org/nyow

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My parents used to take us down to the station in Oshawa occasionally to see the trains come and go. I was maybe 5 or 6. I don’t remember the trains. The only reason that I remember anything is that they took a picture of me on the stairway that went over some of the tracks.

My greatest memory was taking the CP ‘Canadian’ from Toronto to Vancouver and back with my mom in 1965. I was 11. I met a kid on the train as we left Toronto on the way west. He had convinced the conductor to let him ride in the cab through parts of Northern Ontario, and he invited me to come along! The conductor and the engineer were fine with it. Unfortunately it was at night but it was still thrilling. The noise, the smells and the Mars light were all enthralling. We almost hit a deer at one point. I was freezing cold because I was only dressed in shorts and a T shirt and the cab windows were open.

Being a dumb kid I hadn’t bothered to tell my mother where I was going. [D)] Fortunately she slept through the whole thing! Imagine her panic if she had woken up not been able to find me on the train! I’m sure the Conductor would have explained the situation.

My favourite locos are FP7s and 9s in CP maroon and grey livery. I wonder why?[swg]

Dave

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About 1950-1951, I recall a train trip from Washington DC to Missouri. Cameron was the goal, east of St.Joe. Pretty sure we took the National Limited to St.Louis. I remember we had a room for the whole family. I have since figured out what kind of car it was from memory of the layout. We entered the room from an angled door in the corner of the room. I recall looking out the window and seeing a steam locomotive WAAAAY up on the front of the train. I was like 4 years old, 5 tops.

MY mother’s family were all railroaders on the B&O. I grew up around trains.

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Other than just stopping to watch a train at the Manchester, VT station, my first ride on a train is my earliest memory.

My mother loved trains and had traveled a lot for her work before she got married. She realized the demise of steam was coming, so took my friend and I on a regularly scheduled, steam powered, passenger train from Manchester to Rutland the last summer that the Rutland RR had steam passenger service.

Great memories,

Richard

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I already long loved trains by the time I was 12, even if not really knowing much about them, in summer of 1970. We rode UP? SP? passenger train from Portland Oregon to Chicago, to see relatives in Michigan. It was pure magic all the way. The sights and scenes you’ll never see by car, being able walk around and to go up to the dome, and even to the open platform on the trailing car. (What’s that occasional water mist!? [+o(] )

The Greyhound trip from Chicago to Lansing…Not so magic.

Somewhere along the west-midwest, riding in the dome, the train went through a swarm of huge locusts. Pow!..Pow…Pow-pow-p-pppppp–, then it sounded like large hail. You couldn’t see forward from the dome after that! Looked like yellow paint.

Dan

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jc Said:

“…12 dead locos with the main rods cut off creaking and groaning from lack of maintenance , being led as I remember a 2-10-2 that wasn’t in good shape all rusty , leaking steam all over and lacking paint leading its brothers off to the scrap yard like a judis goat.”

I got to thinkin’, after my first reply, THAT would make an interesting model scene! Maybe a topic for a new thread? Dan

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When I was a kid aged 3 to 11, we lived about 100 yards from a B&O set of tracks. There are two things that I remember about the railroad. One was seeing the steam engines being pulled by diesel to the scrap yard. The banging and clanging noises the steam engines made were loud and somewhat frightening.

The second memory came after we moved away from the railroad. I couldn’t sleep in our new house. It was too quiet. No clickety-clack noises as the trains went by.

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The Pennsylvania was just moving from steam to diesel. From my home on Vineyard Street, you could still hear the mournful cry of the steamer as it passed through town in the early hours of the morning. At that time, there was nothing between our house and the rail line. You could stand outside and watch the southbound at two in the morning and northbound at four in the morning carrying travelers from Chicago to Cincinnati and the reverse as they passed the DOW Tower. When the trains passed through Anderson, the passenger cars were dimly lit allowing those who were awake to see but dimly enough not to disturb those who were sleeping.The Pennsy is long gone and the track has been removed, but at night, on some nights, I think I can still hear the sound of those locos whistling up for the crossings…

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We were returning to Casper WY (home) from a visit to the western part of the state - maybe Riverton, where my grandmother lived. It was around 1962. I was six or seven years old, give or take.
On the western end of town was the Standard Oil refinery. I remember seeing a long string of black tank cars sitting on a low concrete viaduct, six or seven feet above the ground I think, near the banks of the Platte River, either ready to go into the loading racks in the refinery or waiting to be hauled to their destination after having been loaded. There were cottonwoods and other trees, along with bushes and other riverbank foliage, growing on either side of the string of cars. I was fascinated.

To this day I like strings of the old 35 foot tank cars, models or prototype (which I haven’t seen one of for years now), all thanks to that one vivid memory.

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I knew we rode trains while my father was in England. I was less than 2 at the time, so I don’t have any memories of it. But, as an adult, I took a 1st class train ride from Kansas City to Raton, New Mexico. It was a great experience. On the return trip, I noticed what sounded like a flat-spotted wheel on our car. Made sleeping at night a bit of a challenge, but it wasn’t enough to ruin the experience.

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Living in NYC in the 50’s, we of course rode the subway. No, never saw a lion, except at the Bronx Zoo. From our apartment window, I could see the NYC long boxcabs lead trains in the Bronx along the Harlem River toward downtown Manhattan. We would frequent the Pennsy to travel to Phila to visit relatives and I remember the GG-1s.

In 1955 we rode the train to Sidney NE to visit grandma. My grandad (he had passed) was a switcher engineer there. I think Sidney was the last town before the UP headed up to Sherman Hill in Wyoming. I was 7 and remember us kids going to the yard and sitting in a caboose. Unfortunately my memory does not recall any locos, perhaps even some nifty late steam.

Back in NYC my friends and I walked the NYC tracks in the Bronx to a small yard just across from the north tip of Manhattan. The workers intercepted us and found us interested, so they rode us in the switcher and let us use the controls. Had a similar experience when we went to the shops at Harmon on Hudson where the electrics for Manhattan were swapped with diesels to head west. The employees gave us a ride in a GP. When walking at Spuyten Duyvil we talked with a crew waiting to cross the trestle to Manhattan and they gave us a ride in the F unit to downtown.

All good memories.

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In the late 1950s on a cool November day I was riding in my grandfather’s 1957 Buick along what was then called Wayzata Blvd/Hwy 12 coming east into Minneapolis downtown from the west. This roadway paralleled the old Minneapolis & St Louis yard. On that day there were dozens of steam locomotives lined up in the yards and my grandfather said they were there to be scrapped. I remember this one event as the start of my life long interest in railroads. Today that yard is long gone and only a pair of Twin City & Western set of tracks remains as the rail route into and out of the western side of Minneapolis, but soon(?) Another light rail commuter line will be built there -ahhhhh , progress! Well, at least it’s still railroading!

Cedarwoodron

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When I was 9 or 10, my Dad took me to NYC to ride the subway, all day. We took the LIRR to get there. A simple but memorable day. it

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When I was 5 or 6 years old, my mother and I went to Newark, NJ Penn Station to pick up my grandmother who was returning from a visit to my uncle in Colorado. The trainshed was big, and dark inside. I see some lights, then the train came whooshing in, a GG1 (or maybe an old streamlined P-5? - who knows!) blowers and motors whining, brakes dragging, a line of passenger cars, lights shining in the windows. What a sight for a little kid.

George V.

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