Steam & Excursion > What's your last recollection....

... of bigtime mainline steam?  I mean - in service.

Mine?  Thanks for asking.

I was a Boy Scout riding on a schoolbus riding home from a Boy Scout camping trip in the wilderness of northern Minnesota.  The NP's transcon paralled our highway - US 10 I believe..  We overtook and gradually passed by an NP freight powered by an A-4 or A-5 4-8-4.

I think that event cemented my relationship loving steam.

-LD

Not in the U.S., but at about 10 years old in 1968, riding a German passenger train, (I believe in the Black Forest area headed to Bavaria). I recall looking out the window on a curve and seeing this belching red & black steam loco with side rods moving up and down pulling our train. IIRC, it was on the chunky side and there was snow on the ground. We went though at least one short tunnel. This was about the time I got my first train set, and I was hooked.

Victor Baird



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/22/26 15:52 by wabash2800.

I was a kid and the family was vacationing on Long Beach Island or Barnegat. We were driving north through Asbury Park, NJ. On the parallel Long Branch line was a passenger train pulled by a Pennsy K4. We paced it for some time and it drifted to a stop at a station. After several traffic lights later the Pacific caught up with us again. It must have been very near the end of Pennsy steam. Not so much action but I also recall Pennsy standby power in steam at the coaling station at Thorndale, PA and bits and pieces of the last runs of the Reading T-1s usually at night from our 3rd floor West Chonshohocken, PA apartment. All long ago and far away!
Gonut

I have none because I was born too late. I'm 70 years old and was born in 1956 in California. Mainline steam was pretty much dead in California by then.

Illinois Central down in Carbondale and DuQuoin IL.

Cranford, NJ on the Jersey Central. The steam powered commuter service with those big CNJ Pacifics and Camel Back 4-6-0s, mid 1950s. We moved to Chatham, NJ about 1957, and steam was already gone on the DL&W. However, made a number trips to South Amboy where the PRR was still using K4s and one Kesa pacifics into the late 1950s.

I was born in 1950 and only one house separated mine from the Southern RR track. Since the Southern ended steam in 1953 I don't remember any steam until the excursion days. I do remember my mother telling she was glad to see steam trains gone. She hated it when one went by and her clean laundry that was hanging on a clothes line would get soot on it. 

Living on the SP Coast line, we saw the last of steam on the SP.  My recollection is tha steam powered freight lasted until 1956, whereas the streamliners were dieselized a couple of years earlier.   a lot of ACs came here for their last days.....I remember parts, nuts and bolts, falling off as they passed by.
I think my last ride behind steam was on the Starlight in late '54.

AA

Stanford White
Carmel Valley, CA

I grew up in the northern suburbs of Chicago and my dad worked for the C&NW.  My dad was nailing shingles on the roof of our new house in Northbrook, Illinois, when, all of a sudden he yelled, "kids get in the car"  He saw a whisp of smoke coming up about a mile away, and guessed it was a steam engine.  We blasted over to the Milwaukee Road tracks at Techny, Ill. and found Milwaukee S-2 northern No 221  coming down off the C&NW air line from Proviso yard and the Milwaukee's Bennsenville yard.  This was fall of 1955 and the engine was scrapped in January of 1956, so one of it's last runs.  We talked to the fireman, and he said they were waiting for the afternoon Hiawatha to pass and they were to merge onto the C&M main. Their run was heading to Minneapolis/ St. Paul where the locomotive was to turn and pick up a train of potatos that were coming from Idaho.   I have photos of my younger brother and I in front of that train.  If the writing on the back of the photo is correct, it had 102 cars behind it.  If I can ever figure out a way to scan and post the photos, I will.  
    I also got to see the end of steam on the C&NW, Burlington beside fan trips, SOO Line,  LS&I, and DM&IR.  Thanks to my dad.

Craig Hanson
Vay, Idaho

 

Although I can't recall any one particular instance, there are two that stand out. Mind you, I was quite young at the time, and of course, steam was on the wain. I was born in Roanoke, noted as the "Alamo of Steam" by Trains magazine editor David P. Morgan, but our family was residing in Northern Virginia.
The first incident occurred probably when I was about five or six years old and my aunt or grandmother was arriving on the train at Berryville. I remember being told by my parents she would be coming on a "streamlined." To my young mind streamliner meant a train powered by an E or F unit such as I might see on the Baltimore and Ohio at Harpers Ferry where we would sometimes meet my paternal grandmother. Berryville was on the Norfolk and Western which was still all steam. Imagine if can my "disappointment" when the train "chugged" into the station powered by one of N&W's streamlined 4-8-2 "baby J's." As I recall, I somewhat disappointedly said "that's just an old steam engine!" Imagine - JUST an old steam engine!
The other incident took place at the Roanoke passenger station. Remember the yellow lines painted on the platform that said stand behind? Well, I placed my toes right on that line, determined to stay right there. But once I saw what was probably an "A" or "Y" class steam locomotive getting closer, my resolve was replaced by discretion and I wisely took a step or two back. The days of steam locomotives were numbered, to be replaced by the "growl" of "dismals." No photographs, but the images remained "etched" in the cobwebs of my mind.

When we first moved to Wheaton, in 1952, steam was still going strong on the North Western.  At night, if seemed like the trains were going right thru the middle of our house.  I didn't know it back then, but those freights were mostly powered by the H Class Northerns and were headed for the connection with the Union Pacific at Omaha.

Then there was the final days of steam riding behind the "tea kettles" that powered the North Western commuter trains.  That was 1955-1956 just as the Heineman era was beginning.  After the railroad was completely dieselized, it was possible to see the long lines of dead steam engines waiting to be scrapped. 

And finally there were the fan trips on the Burlington behind 4960 and 5632 as well as on the Grand Trunk behind 4070 in the early to mid sixties.

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Two "lasts" stand out 

June 20, 1958  Caught NKP 752 in Erie.  Did not realize until several weeks later it would be the last Berkshire I'd see in regular service.  Of course that was followed by the brief use of NKP 0-8-0's in Conneaut in 1959.

July, 1959.  Spent several days in Montreal on the CP.  Most locals and commuter trains were still steam powered with 4-6-2's and 4-6-4's.  A few freights had 2-8-0's or 2-8-2's.  It was the last "pocket of steam" for me.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 08/25/26 06:25 by NKP715.

My only childhood encounter with steam was on a forlorn narrow gauge branch line to Dubrovnik, Yugoslavia (since the split-up, part of Croatia). It was a short freight train behind a Skoda 0-8-2, a wheel arrangement that I don't think existed on this side of the Atlantic. 

This was 1964. 

I was born in the '40's and raised in Boise, Idaho. My father used to drive us up to the depot to watch the UP 4-8-4's charge out of the station with the mail trains, the Idahoan in the the early 50's. 0-6-0's and 2-8-0's switched daily in the downtown yard.
When we would drive down to Twin Falls from Boise to visit our grandparents, we kids would constantly look at the horizon across the desert to find traces of smoke which indicated a train was nearby, usually with a 2-8-8-0 Bull Moose helper assisting F units.
That hooked my brothers and I on railroads for a lifetime.

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I was old enough to see steam on both the IC and NKP in my home town.  The NKP paralleld (more or less) US 150 from Normal to East Peoria to see my Uncle, and US 51 and 52 paralleled the IC Charter Line from Normal to Freeport when we went to my grandmother's..   I remember the engines vaguely as most o.f it vanished before I was in 4th grade.  The one memory that really sticks in my mind though, is from about 5 years old.  The IC Charter line northbound through town came up out of the valley of Sugar Creek, crossed over the GM&O mainline in "downtown" Normal, and contiued up the hill to a place called Kerrick, which was the hill.  The butcher shop where we bought meat was one store and a small parking lot away from the IC.  I.   vividly remember coming out of the shop  and walking to the car with my dad, when a northbound with a full tonnage train came whistling for the multiple grade crossings, and stormed across the twin GM&O diamonds,  briefly lost its footing, and stormed on by me and dad.  I remember first being terrified, and then totally entranced by the steam locomotive.   I kno'w now, that it was one of IC's rebuilt 2-8-2's in the 2100 series which had been recylindered with larger cylinders off of 2-10-2s that had been turned into 4-8-2s and thus were the most powerful on the system.  They were the regular power on the road freights through town.  After that, every time we went to my grandmother's  I sat staring at the tracks hoping for a steam engine, and for a few years I often saw one, and then they were gone. 

I do not know the year but some time in the 1950s the NYC announced that the last steam powered passenger train would leave Boston.
My mother & I went down to the Newtonville Station to see the west bound "New England States" go thru.

SP 4449. worlds fair daylight from Los Angeles to San Fransisco with a over night stop in SLO. 

Being born in 1949 in San Fancisco, California I remember the end of steam around 1956 on the Southern Pacific. In 1954 my family road the Daylight from San Francisco to Los Angeles when I was around 5 years old. My Mother told me I stood in the coach seat for a great deal of the trip and screamed bloody murder when it was time to get off in Los Angeles. I lived in  Redwood City, California four houses from the main line and my Mother would take me up to the corner to watch the afternoon commute fleet work south from San Francisco to San Jose often! I remember big black steam locomotives with silver faces and straight tops (skyline casing) running out their last miles. These would have been GS class 4-8-4's and also MT class 4-8-2's. I do remember this as if it was yesterday. I have had a great railroad career of approximately 40 years in Engine Service! I was a crew member-Fireman on the SP4449 starting in 1975 on the American Freedom Train and most of the excursions after. Firing on the 4449 made me think many times of that little boy standing on the corner of D Street watching that parade go by...Thanks Mom.

My answer is two-fold:

1) Being born in 1942, I witnessed steam on the Central RR of New Jersey, in Cranford, through the early/mid 1950s. I also visited the PRR in South Amboy in order to learn and work on the K4 locomotives. My final exposure to regular working steam was on the Buffalo Creek & Gauley RR as well as the Kentucky & Tennessee RR in the mid 1960s.

2) My last experience working on steam was the final main line excursion from Portland to Bend, OR and return on 4449, in 2017. Boy was it HOT!!!!! 

1955-1956 photographing PRR and Reading T-1s that were leased to PRR in Central Penna. at Sunbury, PA.  Tom Klinger