Nostalgia & History > Why are you a railfan?

I started pondering this the other day - just why am I a railfan? Just what is it that attracts me to these hunks of iron and steel that I will spend great amounts of time and money to go out and photograph and video tape these iron horses? While I usually find the hobby very satisfying there are rare times that I would just like to give it up. But just what is it that causes me to take a week and a half of vacation to go out and say, chase the NKP 765 to and from Train Fest? If someone asks my why I am a railfan I usually answer because it's my hobby. Trying to figure this whole thing out I can always put the cause on my family - my grandfather worked in the car department for the Erie as did three of my uncles. Or, the interest came naturally as I cannot remember a time when I was not attracted to trains, especially steam locomotives. Can anyone help me here? What's your scoop on this? I'm sure that there is more than one person that would tell me that I am getting too philosophical in this, just to shut up and enjoy the hobby.

Roger Holmes

Being born in Chicago in the early fifties locked me for life. My late Mom related the story of having my playpen in the living room, in the corner with corresponding windows. Three doors down was the Rock Island Suburban Line. She told me that every time a train went by, I would get hyper-active.....

For me, it is those things that stimulate the senses, pure and simple. One thing is for sure, I wouldn't trade the memories for all the money on earth.

Bob

ATSF100WEST......Out

I love watching trains... Feeling the ground shake when they pass and trying to convey that feeling through photography. It's also good mental health to get away once in awhile - sometimes being away from people is a good thing, too.

I have always wondered that. That earliest memories of my life are about trains. I was born and grew up in northern New Jersey, and by the time I was 6 or 7, I knew all the lines - CNJ, EL, PRR/PC, NYSW, etc, and whereever we drove, I knew what railroads were nearby and which ones we would cross. I just loved watching the trains go by and wondered where the tracks went. My father worked for the PRR for awhile, so he introduced me. His grandfather was the engineer of a steam engine for the PRR out of Trenton, so I guess it is in the blood!

Kind of like why I ride a Harley, if I have to explain it you wont understand..........

My dad was a railfan. He worked for the PRR for a brief time. He would take my brother and I to Hiway Hobby in Ramsey NJ (the old building) and it kind of started there.

Got hooked, hooked staying on a vacation in Groton, CT when I was 14 and our motel was near the old New Haven. Didn't take a single picture that vacation, but the heavy Amtrak action fascinated me. Back home in northern NJ I started riding my bike to all the local railroads, then started to bring a camera with me.

The rest is history - not totally sure why I have such an interest, just do.

Granddads were Lackawanna and Pennsy men, that's all the explanation you need.

Marty Harrison
Knob Noster, MO

No railway employees in our family for generations, except me.

I was the youngest of three boys in our family, and my older brothers would take me along on their "train spotting" adventures near home in Leicester, England.

"Train spotting" involves collecting locomotive numbers by personal observation and underlining them in a printed roster book.
It remains a popular hobby in the UK, but was especially popular in the 1950's and 60's.

My older brothers moved on to other interests, but the fascination stayed with me.

We were an active family, and noting my continuing train interest, my dad would always try to include some train activity in family vacations.

It is often said that being a railfan is a terminal illness. I recall about 1950 when I was about 8, riding in the family auto (a 1940 Hudson!) when we stopped at a railroad crossing in my home town of Mesa, Arizona. A passenger train stopped at the depot blocking the crossing at the East end of the depot. I remember asking my mother why the steam engine was backwards. Now I know -it was a cab forward!! I was hooked!! 60 years later I remained addicted...

TIOGA PASS

In 1968 (or so), Wayne Beever, the Burlington Route agent in my hometown took me under his wing and taught me about railroads on my regular visits to the depot. Thanks to him, crews that worked the West Quincy Missouri-Brookfield Missouri on the CB&Q/BN took a liking to me and the rest is history.

The depot is gone, Wayne has marked up on the celestial extra board and all of the old heads have retired.

The memories remain ... priceless.

Regards,
Burlington John

That is a great question?? I was looking at a SP lumber drag going through downtown Stockton. A hooker stop and asked me that same question. I answered her question: "When I see this train, someone in Oregon cut a tree down. Then another person mills the logs. It is transported on the train to some location in Southern California or Arizona to build a house or building." I added " Most stuff we use today is transported by train. Plus, its' a harmless hobby." She looked curious and told me "It's good that you have a passion, because I don't. But I wished I could have one." A sad but true story.
My main point: If you have a passion that doesn't harm anyone and you get full enjoyment-ENJOY IT!!



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 07/28/11 11:08 by ClipX.

Born in San Bernardino so just about anywhere we lived down there you could either hear or see something railroad related.

Adam

Well, I grew up in Rochester NY near the NYC main line, my Dad loved trains, he would take me trainspotting...
The Erie Lackawanna main line to Buffalo went thru my uncle's farm in Campbell NY so I saw a lot of trains there...
Plus my Dad had an old Lionel Yankee Flyer and an old Hudson, and we had a small train layout in the basement....
I guess it all combined to make me a railfan!

I spent the first 12 years of my life living next to the C&O mainline in Columbus Ohio and I had several family members who worked many years for the N&W in Roanoke VA and Columbus.

Grew up that way. My father was a Mechanical Engineer so got introduced early on to things mechanical.

My railroad father injected my mother with his railroad genes and i came out of the womb a railroading railfan

Don't really know what or how it started. There were no railroaders in my family. The only one before me that remotely cared about a train was my mother. My dad was a truck driver so you KNOW I didn't get it from there. I liked trains from my earliest memories but warships and naval vessels had just as big a hold and when push came to shove, I joined the Navy vice laying in a foxhole or worse in Vietnam. Never lost my love of trains even with 21 years of Naval service, most a long ways from trains (they don't float real well). When I retired I picked a place still quite a ways from any mainline but once the chance to model trains returned the hook was set nice and deep. Today, I do the railfan thing more to record the passing of events for future railfans and to leave something of historical reference behind and at the same time satisfy this never ending hunger to watch one more train go by.

Grand dad was a Pennsy Man. Grew up in Hbg Pa. Lived at the west end of the electrified lines, hence forth GG1'S/E44'S/E33'S/E40's, mail trains with 6 E units gettin it on at MacClay Street in Hbg for the wb run, too many things to really list. PRR then PC with there awesome roster of just about everything made. The sounds, the feel, the smell, the sights. Almost all the senses (kinda hard to "taste" a train). Big machinery, I don't know. Just that I got the bug early and still enjoy it immensely. Some say it's an obsession, I say its a passion. Plus its an escape of sorts from all the everyday BS we all live with. Its just my way of relaxing. Great question and I have often wondered myself what got me going. Ben

For me, 'why' has a different set of answers than 'what'.

What made me a railfan at about age eight was my Dad exclaiming "Here comes the Daylight!" -- I'm in the backseat of the family DeSoto, I look up from my favorite tin firetruck toy, and suddenly I behold this streaking vision of red and orange. I hear the booming chorus of the diesels, and see fleeting images of people moving around inside, having lunch at a table, people looking back at us as we are looking at them. And like an apparation, it's suddenly gone. Empty track, no evidence it ever even happened but for the rush it left behind.

Why that made me a railfan is that I liked the thrill of it. It felt like a personal show to which I was uniquely privy. And I didn't find anything equivalent to that rush, at least not in my childhood up to that point. I sucked at sports, was socially inept, loved TV but wanted to climb inside the tube and live there with the actors and actresses -- and I couldn't do that.

Then, first time riding a train, I was older by then... the next set of 'whats' were maybe the Santa Fe's "Golden Gate" and a coach with fascinating Navaho motifs, or maybe the "Sacramento Daylight" and a coach right next to the locomotive, so close you could see it bouncing through the window and count the scabs in the paint. Heat coming out the floor registers and providing reassurance like an old, comfy hotel, or was it the refreshing snap of working A/C on a blistering Valley Day, when our house only had a swamp cooler?

More 'whats', not 'whys'.

The 'whys', I think, are that this conveyance was a moving home. A rumbling, comforting, rolling womb that sometimes meandered through the countryside, spying on shabbier backyards than ours -- and sometimes hit dizzying, viscerally thrilling speeds for something so huge. The windows were their own motion pictures playing just for me, with sets, costume and lighting. And with some exceptions (again, other stories) the people were perfect strangers who were mostly safe to talk to because they didn't already know too much about me, had formed no opinions about me yet, and would eventually leave the train... and leave me alone to enjoy the ride.

Trains were like the original chat rooms. And it was safe to be a stranger.

The 'what' of the appeal of trackside railfanning came later. And it was almost always about the physical thrill. The vibrations and sensations are the reason most people who are predisposed get addicted to anything, from drugs to drag racing. And I think railfans are biologically predisposed. Genetics, as has been mentioned in this thread.

Eventually, there came the 'stats' phase -- the 'what' became a quest for learning, interpreting the history, following the players, gathering the kind of factual acquisitions and opinion-forming that also characterize the draw to organized sports -- you and your crowd know something that only a select group of opinion-holders share, and you speak their shorthand. And eventually I met actual railroaders, mostly the ones who secretly liked the trains they worked on, and I developed friendships and began to understand railroading from a new perspective. Backstage. Not as flowery. More like war stories. But only adding to the cloth of the drama.

It's the same draw found in any fraternal or communal organization. And like those clubs and societies, there is personal acceptance I found that didn't equal what I found elsewhere -- at least to that point in my young life.

And finally, there's the interpretation -- I took photos, I wrote stuff, and I shared somewhat abstract observations about the experiences with friends, with other true believers, and even with skeptical civilians. People whose raised eyebrows told me without words that they thought my 'hobby' was pretty odd. And that individual interpretation, storytelling, and abstraction is what artists do. It brings the ego satisfaction and the recognition for a unique viewpoint which artists enjoy, and not all of us can be novelists, painters, or musicians. But we all can take pictures and tell stories about stuff that means something to us.

Oh, there was railroading in my family, sort of. One uncle was a Santa Fe telegrapher. Another was a contract laborer who lived near the railroad and occasionally worked around it. And my folks were full of stories about riding trains while in The Service during The War, stories whose details made enough of an impression that I could recite them back. But that had nothing to do with it. 'What' made me a railfan was trains.

But 'why' I became a railfan was about finding a unique thrill that worked for me like drugs, a participation that felt and acted like sports, a community that felt like family, and the forum to make personal interpretations that satisfied like art. I was a kid who was more comfortable by himself, loved the solace of my own thoughts, but occasionally needed the comfort of a band of buddies, and the stimulation of 'the big show'. A barrelling "Daylight" sealed the deal, but by nature I think I was already primed to receive it.

~ BZ

For me,,it`s the noise,The smell,and the you never know what`s coming.

Imagine in the days before Traces and internets,,just sitting by the tracks,not knowing what was coming.

I used to ride my bike up to the Lindley Avenue crossing on the SP Coast line,Hoping one of the searchlight signals either at Balboa, or else to the west from Chatsworth was either Yellow,or Red,,meaning something was on the way.
Once while waiting for Amtrak to come by,to my amazement,there was a(n) SP F unit on the point,,only time I ever saw one.
The flash of a gyralight coming from Chatsworth towards the east was mega excitement.I used to love the thrumm of SD45s and the looks of the U33s

Fast forward to years (And years) later on a railfan trip to the Tehachapis along with a friend,just sitting at Caliente around Midnight,and what comes by but the Dow chemical firefighter training train with the George Bush 4141 on the point,needless to say,the chase to Bakersfield was on,and I missed work the next day due to lack of sleep,,but was well worth the videos we got of it.

Luckily,I was able to buy a house within close enough proximities to the tracks that I can railfan from my front yard,,have been lucky enough to see all but 2 UP heritage units (Missing the CNW andthe Rio Grande) along the coast line (live in Chatsworth),wish the traffic was a little higher but the Oil cans and the Leesedale keep the house rumbling occasionally.I tell the wife that it`s good just in case of an earthquake,,the house is already settled and used to the movement.

CT97