About 1 1/2 years ago I did a poll in the Classic Trains forum about “Favorite Railroad Decade.” In the poll you could choose a decade that you would like to visit IF you had a time machine.
Here I am not going to do a poll but just ask a simple question that probally will be extremely difficult to answer. Many of us walk down memory lane, here is a chance to do it again but alter the walk as we might now liked to have walked.
If you had a time machine and could go back to see any railroad, any train, any engine, any railroad person, any railroad event, any railroad depot, any railroad structure, any railroad line . . . well you get the picture. Where would you go and what would you like to see? Please include a time span of the era you are traveling to so we can understand it a little better?
The possibilities are endless just here in the United States. But when you factor in Canada, Mexico, and all the world, then it really opens up some unique choices. If you have any links you would like to post then by all means, please do. Not only could this be fun we all might actually learn something from it. I look forward to your comments. [:)]
I would bet that most of us can’t limit our walk to just one railroad or one event. I completely understand if you would like to list more than one. Once again, I look forward to your replies.
As I recently said on another heading, it would be the Milwaukee Road in the “Fall.” It reminds me of all we have lost as rail fans, and I am too young to have witnessed it myself.
But, then again, I have always wanted to see a Hiawatha, and a T-1, and a Niagra, and a Fairbanks’ Trainmaster, and it would have been awesome to see UP’s 4x8x4 Northern help a stalled freight. You are right this is a hard choice . . . But I think I will stay with the Milwaukee Road in the Fall.
The place I grewup and close to it was in fact the most facinating place to have experienced the railroads and “their times” when things were good. This would be an area centered around Buffalo NY, once the seciond largest rail center in the world, and a great lakes trans shipment center…to about mid NYS and down into PA. You had mountain railroading, rural countrysides full of small towns, milk trains, international interchange. At least 16 major carriers accessed Buffalo and over 10,000 vessels a year visited it’s harbor every year. Greats like the PRR, NYC, ERIE, DL$W, LV and others served the region and it was laced with numerous mains and branches each with it’s own character. The city was craced with major yards and engine terminals, fantastic passenger stations like the old LV station in downtown Buffalo, the old DL& W waterfront terminal and the majestic art Deco NY terminal on the east side, Industry of almost every type was abundant through out the city and region. Prime time to be there…1940-1950.
There was still significant economic life, rail activity and railroad variety in the 60’s and seventies when I grew up there, nothing like the 40’s but still a fasinating time and place. It died rapidly in the 80’s to 90’s, not even a shadow of what it used to be.
I’ve three - specific by location - admittedly inpired by other posts.
Spring 1869 in Utah. I want to see men lay 10 miles of track in a day and then be there for the golden spike a week later.
1890-1910 in Southern NJ. I want to see Atlantics with wood coaches race between Camden and Atlantic City. I want to see the ever-higher-drivered Atlantics arrive from PRR and RDG shops- purpose built for this service. It was the fastest RR in the world at the time and has been going down hill since the turn of the century.
PRR in WWII. Altoona would be as good a location as any. I just want to see how all that stuff actually moved! That 90% of is was steam would be a huge bonus.
I’d have to go along with Mark, on the 1906 part anyway. It would be interesting to watch the construction of the transcontinental railway, from either end, but that sort of thing gets boring after a few weeks. Watching mainline operations is something I never tire of. Even yard operations are fascinating to me. In the “good ol’ days” (pre-911) I spent many hours in the parking lot at the Champaign yard watching them switch. Steam switchers and mainline steamers were something I didn’t see enough of when I was a kid and I’d love to see it for real again.
I would choose the late 40s to mid 50s.There was plenty of steam and a wide variety of diesels from all of the builders. I would like to visit places like Tehchapi, Horsehoe Curve, and the Milwaukee main line over the Bitteroot Mountains with boxcab elecrics and Little Joes.I would like to see Horseshoe Curve during WW II.with the awesome amount of traffic and big steam.
I’d go back to early 19th Century Cornwall (UK ) and go drinking rough cider with Richard Trevethick… Apparantly he was quite good fun to go on the **** with… I’d also tell him that his Pen-Y-Daryn was going to be too heavy for the rails of the time to cope with…
I’d like to go back in time to 1948 Minneapolis St. Paul, when railroading was at it’s heyday. Of course I’d ride the Hiawatha, take plenty of pictures, especially of almost anything in MSP, it’s all gone now. Also I’d ride the TCRT streetcars- Then rent a car, watch all the branch lines that are decrepit now. Okay, so maybe this would be more of a two week time visit.
After I’d taken plenty of shots, video and still, rode every train and measured every building, I’d buy a couple classic cars, wedge them in the time machine, and come back to 2004 a much happier person.
I would want to see the old Penn Station in NYC. To pull into that station in an old steam pulled passenger train would be a great thing to experience…
I’d like to go back to just about 90-100 years ago, although there’s so much I’d like to see what the operation actually looked like then (can we just choose an entire state?) I suppose I’d choose the area I grew up in and see what the N&W looked like in Columbus, I’d like to see what it looked like when the C&O was operating via trackage rights between Waverly, Ohio, and Columbus over the N&W, I’d like to see Thurston, Ohio, when the Eastern and Western Branches of the T&OC were both going strong (and where they split). Oh, there’s so much that I could go on but that’s probably the case with everyone responding.
My retirement layout, still many years away, will be Los Angeles, 1939, but I wouldnt want to go back in time to the actual since the entrenched racism that existed back then would so **** me off that I wouldnt enjoy myself.
We often forget, we do not live is the same world as then…How would you react seeing a segregated diner? or hearing someone refer to another by a very racist or denegrating term. Here in LA in the 1930’ s Blacks, Asians, and Latinos were all very segregated and subject to a lot of abuse. The Zoot Suit Riots of 1942 against Latinos were entirely racially motived by White soldiers and sailors. The America-First organization was a thinly veiled pro-nazie movement. Blacks were routinely harassed and abused by the police, Japanese Americans were dispiezed by many before the war and were sent to concentration camps during the war, they lost everything they owned based on purely racial fears. Even Chinese American were considered the Yellow Peril right up to WW2 when the perception slowely shifted for most of them due to the news of the attrocities commited in China by the Japanese, making it even worse for Japanese Americans. No German or Italian American were ever rounded up on mass and sent to Nevada.
So while I’ll one-day model what I consider the high point of railroading in LA, I most definetly WOULD NOT want to go back to what I consider the low-point of our species attitudes towards its own kind.
…you might have had trouble doing this. Steam never ran into the old Penn Station. It was third rail electric from Manhattan Transfer (roughly Harrison) from the west and also through the East River tubes as well. The PRR had a fleet of DD1 electrics to pull the trains into and out of Penn Sta. It would still be cool to have seen the DD1s in action, though. Each “D” had a big electic motor in it that drove a jackshaft which was coupled to the drivers by side rods. Would have really been something to watch!
Ok I will agree with Mark 100 years ago or better.1912 even to see the Heisler I run get its shop photo taken.To see locomotives that were assigned to engineers and the little things they would do to spiff em up.(well make the fireman do things to spiff em up)But what a day it would be to even be allowed to work one! Mr Smith I must disagree with you on a few points First of all the Japanese were moved to internment camps not concentration camps.We didnt slaughter them like Germans slaughtered anyone they felt like.Reason being they were moved was due to the inteligence gathered before Pearl Harbor.All by Japanese “civilians”.Were Germans rounded up?not the same way but you would have a hard time getting a job with a German accent or name.I have a friend whos grandfather was murdered cause he was German.Investigated?Nope.That is called War and thats life.You think that time was bad in LA lets go down south.Or even up north.Doesnt matter where you are in any place or time there is ugliness and evil abounding some people stand up to it others let it pass them by.I think the whole gist is to go back to a time where we can see history and live it as well.Remember those who fail to learn from the mistakes of the past doom future generations .Yes I changed it,my grandfather helped me to.When 9/11 occured he said one of the most powerful things I have ever heard.Looks like we forgot Pearl Harbor.But then again we forget a lot of things.Be safe all revel in the happy times but tell of the bad as well so we dont forget.
So many choices…How about early 50’s Chicago. Everybody who was anybody went to Chicago, or was a short train ride away. I would have a good chance to see anything I wanted except maybe big articulated steam. I would take with me a present day map of abandoned buildings (those with sidings inside) and “accidently reroute” a few select locomotives from the scrap line. Then, when I got back, [bday] to me. Oh look, a Mikado, just what I’ve always wanted.[8D]
My top three (in no particular order) places that I’d like to travel back in time to would be:
New York City in the 1950’s or 1960’s
Penn Station, Grand Central Terminal, Sunnyside Yard…what’s there not to love in the Big Apple? That article on NYC in the 60’s in the November Trains certainly makes me want to go there, although I still probably would have made this choice anyway.
Chicago in the 1950’s
Chicago! Need I say more?
UK in the 1960’s
There’s lots of stuff I love about Britain, but the main thing I’d be after on this trip is steam. Steam wasn’t retired from BR until 1968 and was still very prevalent for most of the time before that. Also great diesels to see as well. I’d love to have ridden on one of the Blue Pullman trains. Where in the UK, I’m not quite sure-London’s great, with lots of other non-train stuff to see as well, but then there’s also places like Doncaster and York…ah, why not just tour the whole country?
You’ve never seen Mazinar out in the deserts near Owens Valley…It was a Prisoner of War camp, a “Concentration” camp by any definition…Straight out of Stalag 17, barbed wire watch towers, bare dirt grounds, no insulation, and common latrenes. Different from the Nazi camps which were designed for extermination of an ethnic group, but they WERE designed to concentrate and c
I’d go back to the 1860s, when steam was king, and they were expanding the rails
to the midwest: the time when Laura Ingalls was a girl around 10 -12 yrs. old.
I would return to Milepost 173 in the late 1960’s for one particular night when I woke up during the night, looked out my window and swore I saw a passenger train.
This was on the freight only Mattoon - Evansville branch line. Did I see it, or was it a dream? I can still picture the passage of passenger cars, with windows back lit, heading north.
Of course upon waking up I would be home and I could spend one more day with my parents ( and see a couple of IC locals pass thru town).