My love of railroading fades in and out. Lately, it’s been pretty faded. Not a good few months.
Before I compromise my opinion by reading the thoughtful replies of all who have done so:
-
Incredible engineering that is confined. Few worries, and lots of predictability, even close-up.
-
Big, noisy, looming, and getting larger. Worse the closer you get…or better, if you are a railfan.
-
They actually make the ground heave. Houses, trucks, bicycles, taxis, subways…nothing else comes close.
-
The more you think about them, the more incredible, complex, simple, expensive, magnificent, useful, and economical they seem.
-
They only materialize in certain situations. One can look up and see contrails, or the actual aircraft. One can look outward from a window, down a block, across a parking lot, down a street, and not see any hint of a train or its infrastructure. You have to come upon it. Or live next to it.
-
You see two or three locomotives. Then you see many long minutes, noisy minutes, of squealing, squalling, protesting, resisting, and trailing tons of steel and cargo. A jet goes past, and so does a bus. Your problems still face you, but the respite is so much longer with the train.
Crandell
I too believe it’s difficult to explain. One thing I realize is…for me, it’s been an interest practically all my life.
I suppose back when I was very young, it was the massive, powerful, image & sounds with it that really made me take notice…I seem to have been interested in “things” mechanical from a very early age.
Now…Decades later…{many}…I suppose I really pay attention to the structure of railroads. The tangents of track…Sight down a long stretch and wonder how that “flat line” is produced and kept in place…
Beautiful, graceful constant radii curves…Routes engineered, to gain access across high elevations, and still maintain 2% or less grades.
Generous use of tunnels to accomplish the routes thru rough terra ferma and maintain usable grades.
Massive structured bridges where necessary. And I love the geometric balanced {even excesses}, designs in depots…and of course structures like GCT in NYC…and the former “late great penn station”…30th st. station…etc…Love those architectually great facilities, giving the impression of strength, and stature. Just sorry not enough seem to appreciate such facilities and we’re losing many of them.
I don’t seem to have much interest in this number or that number of railroad equipment, and color schemes, etc…But certainly love the strength {power}, the steamers and today’s diesels project. Nothing like seeing a mile plus length of train working it’s way up a one or two percent grade, knowing it is moving 10,000 tons or more doing so…
Just my [2c]
I’m a railfan since I was 10 years old and it’s the first time that I really think about this question.
My answer is : I like the calm pending around a right of way. Suddenly the silence is broken and it’s like the thunder. A big train passes near you at top speed. And then the silence again…
Each time it’s a big pleasure to watch a train. And I don’t conceive holidays without a train excursion.
Simon
There are some amazing answers on here. I like most of them, and can understand Zug’s feelings. There are times when the job became a chore, and I just wanted to get done and get out of there.
It was probably in my genetic code, though my parents and sisters didn’t seem to share it. Maybe it’s Asperger’s.
Composer Gustav Mahler, asked about his religion, replied, “I am a musician”. For me, railroads and railroading are as close to religion as anything non-spiritual could be. I am a railroader (emeritus).
All little kids appear to like tails of the “Fire Breathing Dragons”, then one day they see one, a Steam Locomotive!
Long ago, when I was a kid 8 to 10 years old, I would walk home from school by way of the local rail yard to watch trains for awhile (New Haven Railroad main line). One day when I was 10, the engine crew of a 0-6-0 switcher invited me into the cab, the noise, the heat, the ride standing on the deck plate, I was a “Railfan” for life. Think of it, my first cab ride in a steam locomotive and my last in an Acela, 65 years of progress in my lifetime.
Well said…it is the way I see it as well.
Crandell
I don’t know whether to groan or laugh [swg]. . . good one, Johnny ! No wonder you liked Conductor Moedinger’s tales so much.
- Paul North.
Having been born a couple of years before the outbreak of WW2 I was moved around (my father was a soldier, my mother was no longer around) until the age of five. Until I was 15 I lived with a busy railroad at the bottom of my back yard. There were many, many trains in that steam period both passenger and freight: war traffic of course boosted the number of trains. I Moved to this part of England at that time but was still quite near a railroad. I am also a volunteer on a local Heritage railroad.
So I was train orientated I guess.
But to get to the nearby large city meant a bus ride (double deckers so common in the UK), We had the choice of quite a few routes as at that time folks had no issues walking one or two miles to a bus route. Therefore my first love has always been for buses - but you can’t run models of them around your back yard like you can large scale trains. [(-D]
Thanks, Paul. I expect that Carl just ignored it.
Three years ago, when I attended the alumni gathering at my college, I ate breakfast with the Science and Math group. For some reason, my Physics professor (the originator of the Science and Math Breakfast) invited me to say a few words. I could not resist speaking of my some-time desire and my work–and many present (there were a few who remembered my liking for train travel when I was in college) appreciated my play.
As to Conductor Moedinger, I confess to having copied his accounts, and thus am able to re-read them from time to time without having to dig the magazines out. He was a man who was able to combine his avocation (love for trains and train travel) with his vocation, and he was able to concentrate on the work at hand. Do you remember his comment when he was rebuked for not collecting his pay checks when he was working Philadelphia to Pittsburg and back?
Absolutely ! “You mean I get paid, too ?” [(-D] [(-D]
(For those who don’t know, during that portion of his career Conductor Moedinger was able to live decently off his tip income alone - I believe he stayed in a Pullman dorm at Pittsburgh, and got most if not all of his meals on the train en route, likely at little or no cost. It was during World War II, the route was heavily patronized by businessmen who really needed to get someplace, and by such techniques as combining seat vacancies for portions of the route and adroitly juggling passengers between seats when the ‘paying customer’ for each seat was temporarily in the diner or lounge, etc., he was often able to ‘create’ some extra seats that otherwise might not seem to exist from a merely casual review of the “earnings diagram” [seating chart kind of document]. Such passengers - when saved from having to stand for a good portion of the trip - were appropriately grateful. Although that good fortune ran in the conductor’s favor, that train’s schedule did not - it departed before the Pullman payroll office opened in the morning, and closed before it got back the next day, so he had no actual opportunity to stop in and pick up the accumulating paychecks. Moedinger’s entire account of the circumstances of the meeting on this subject with Pullman’s non-nonsense Philadelphia Division Superintendent - which culminated in the above quote - is hilarious, and well worth some effort to find. Johnny, do you suppose the folks at KalPubCo would mind if we repeated it here ? [:-^] )
I have used that one for myself from time to time, and also applied it to others who have ‘jobs’ that look like a mix of play + work, such as whitewater raft guides, park rangers, etc. - “You mean you get paid, too ?” [swg]
- Paul North.
Paul, I am not sure about the feeling towards a verbatim quotation, but anyone who has access to the May, 1972 issue of Trains can find the account on page 42. (All I had to do to find this was to look through a stack of papers on my computer desk.)
The serpentine movement of the cars/engines through straights/curves. Seeing an operating steam engine up close takes the cake. It smells, hisses, chugs, whistles, makes the ground shake, the valve gear moves in un-understandable ways. Its the closest way that steel gets to come alive.