Funny! [:D]
If when you’re on a road trip, and it’s time to pull over and have some lunch from your cooler, you ALWAYS find a location next to railroad tracks. If necessary, even ones with full-fledged trees growing between the rails.
You might be a railfan if…
The head-end power looks light and just know there has to be mid-train power.
You hear the “squawk box” 9 miles to the west and know exactly how much time you have 'til the train rolls past your “spot.”
From the time the train rolls past your spot, you know you have exactly 2.5 to 3 minutes until you hear the box to the east.
Yeah… its pretty bad!
You might just be a railfan if you are very nearly involved in a head-on collision after veering left of center because you were focused on the darn train tracks running alongside the road instead of on your driving.
I am ashamed to have to admit that I did that once. Lucky for me there was no accident. The guy in the oncoming car really laid on his horn. He was not very happy with me. 
-FMC
You might be a railfan if:
You time your bicycle rides between Alpine, TX and Marfa, TX to see the Sunset Limited and numerous freights go by,
You go to a park in Temple, TX, which is adjacent to the former Santa Fe division office building and station; it also houses the Amtrak station, to read,
You take your bicycle on a trip to the Golden Spike Tower so that you can ride along the UP line between visits to the tower,
You tell your new bride – 1966 - that a bedroom on the overnight train from NYC to Montreal is just a tad smaller than the honeymoon suite reserved for you at the Chateau Frontenac.
You think the current meal selection on an Amtrak train is perfectly fine and delicious.
You grouse about the current meal selection on an Amtrak train, prominently associating the word “Anderson” with various more or less profane terms, whether you would find it ‘perfectly fine and delicious’ on any other train.
Been there, done that! When I was working and covering Richmond’s West End I used to take my lunch break in a mall parking lot right next to the CSX (ex-RF&P) mainline. And I wasn’t the only one doing so! I saw a fair amount of “regulars” over the years.
But not during the summer. There was no shade and summers here can be brutal!
Best show in town, and it was free! And in this age of run-through power you never knew what might come through.
if your daughter and her boyfriend (now husband) still kid you about the time you drove into a train station depot parking lot while on vacation with them without any rhyme or reason because you knew it was the time Amtrak was due and the boyfriend was completely mystified as to why anyone would do that.
I couldn’t count the number of times I bicycled to North Hackensack for lunch or dinner at McDonalds to get the ‘honorary steam engine’ experience from one or more U34CHs. Why go anywhere else with such a show right across the drive-through lane?
Well, the Mickey-D’s is still there, so’s the Pascack Valley Line, as active as ever. The U34CHs? Well, as Lucius would say, “Gone with the snows of yesteryear.”
But it’s not all bad. A buddy of mine was at that same Mickey-D’s earlier this year and saw the NJ Transit CNJ Heritage GP40! The downside?
“Dammit! I didn’t have my camera!”
But if you want to relive those days Anchor Videos has a DVD of a head-end ride on the Pascack Valley Line, shot from the cab of a UH34CH! It was shot in 1990, but things haven’t changed too much, a lot of what’s seen is recognizable to guys like you and me.
I watched it about a dozen times after buying it at a trainshow the previous weekend!
www.train-video.com Look under "Railroad Video Productions.)
So can I…much to the chagrin of the others who are in the car with me, depending on me to get them somewhere at the appointed time.
It was June 1, 2002, the night of the wedding of our elder daughter. We were coming home from “our” reception (well, yeah, we paid for it!), and in the car with me were my wife, my younger daughter, and her date for the night, a guy from Racine she went to school with. His dad (I think) was supposed to come to our house and pick him up after the reception. The reception was held in Wheaton, and I took the route that wuld lead me along the tracks to get back to Lombard. Nothing much happened most of the way.
We got to Finley Road, at the western edge of Lombard, and there was an eastbound coal train “staging” on Track 2. Still being the good spouse-of-the-mother-of-the-bride, I elected to cross the tracks there at Finley. Normally, that would save me a bit of distance, and two stop lights. But…
As soon as I headed into the turn, the flashers lit up. Good railroaader that I am (and good example to the young drivers in the car), I stopped the car for the descending gates. An eastbound stacker went by on Track 1. And the gates didn’t go up…there was a westbound coal empty on Track 3. And before he could get by, the staging train started east. The last of the westbound scoots for the day went by on Track 3 then. And before he could clear, an eastbound manifest came through on 1. That was five trains, witho
When I hired on as a boiler inspector with The Hartford Steam Boiler Inspection and Insurance Company in 1991, the logo was a 4-4-0 sans tender numbered 1866 (when the company was founded) in an oval. It drove me nuts how everyone referred to it as a “train.” I had to give up telling people that it’s a locomotive that’s not going to get very far without a fuel supply.
Maybe your tradition is different from others’ for naming the job. In western Europe trains are driven by a driver. Machinery is designed and developed by an engineer, as is the permanent way, signalling, communications, PTC etc.
If you are setting with the wife watching TV at home and the local freight blows the horn at one of several crossings and the wife says, listen, did you hear it, they are playing your song.
In response to CShaveRR:
Wow, five trains for one crossing stop? The ultimate railfan “inconvenience”! And totally worth it.
If you sit and enjoy reading all of these posts and just smile because they are all you.
[quote user=“Fred M Cain”]
SD70Dude
You are happy to get stopped at crossings.
Oh Yeah ! I can relate to this ! Most people when they approach a grade crossing will hit the gas to get across quickly if they see a train in the distance. For me, if I see a train coming, if there was no one behind me, I’d stop and wait until the gates finally activated and came down.
No use wasting the opportunity to watch a good train go by !
Regards,FMC
This has been true for me as long as I’ve had my license. I deliberately go the “back way” past Flemington, NJ because it takes me across the NS grade crossing in Three Bridges (former LV main). And if signal 49 is lighted, I have a specific route around the village to follow that will keep me near the crossing until the approaching train shows up.
You might be a railfan if…
Posted by steve-in-kville on Thursday, December 3, 2020 8:29 AM
You’re watching TV or a movie and you hear a train horn but its the wrong pattern for a crossing!
Regards - Steve
Or there’s a train in a scene, and you’re trying to figure out (or already know) what museum equipment is being used! (example - A League of Their Own)
Speaking of horns, you notice that multiple football teams (including Rutgers University) sound a train horn after big plays. RU has a three-bell horn that I can’t easily identify, but Purdue uses my favorite, a Nathan M-5!