Nostalgia & History > Earliest Memories of Trains

I've just been wondering how many TO subscribers can recall their earliest memory of a train, and what those memories might be.

I can start with my own: I'm in a New York Central parlor car (in later years my dad told me it was a family trip aboard the eastbound Empire State Express). Mom is in one revolving parlor seat, and Dad is in the adjacent one. I'm roughly age 3, and I get to choose whose lap on which I want to sit for the trip. The train is awaiting departure in Buffalo Central Terminal, and it's summer 1950. Later, at lunch, I ask the waiter in the diner if we have a steam engine or a "deezie."

Art House

My mother took me from San Jose to San Francisco and back on the Del Monte to go shopping. I was about 3 years old and had my beloved teddy bear, Pudge, with me. I lost it somewhere and I remember the conductor bringing it back to me. I was fascinated by the sound of the punch on the tickets. I fell madly in love with anything connected to trains. This wasn't a bad deal since I was an only child and my father was also a railfan so we began to go down to watch the trains at the roundhouse.
C.

Carol Voss
Bakersfield, CA

I am not sure of the year (early 70s) but I was riding with my grand parents (In a Renault no less..UGLY car)and we were in in El Cajon Ca in the middle of the day. We were first in line at the crossing and I remember the grey SW from the SDA&E came across "backwards" It was loud and it seemed a 100 foot tall to me in the back seat.
It didn't really sink in then, but I remember my Granddaddy used it to lecture me for a long time on train safety. Nothing wrong with that but all my Grandaddy needed was to see was any machine to give a safety lecture on everything associated with it.
I went to school at Encanto elementary and took those SDAE trains for granted until they weren't there in the day time any more.
Art in DC

My first memory was of a cab ride on the Monterey Local in 1959. I was about 2 years old. The engineer was Jerry McCabe. We were switching at the old Central Supply, where my father worked at, building roof trusts. (Hayward Lumber is now located there, MP129). My mother always told me my passion for trains started before that, but this is what I can recall as the earliest recollection.

Roger
MSVRR @ MP115 UP Coast Sub

My earliest memories was riding the miniature railroad in Central Park in San Mateo (CA) in the early 60's. I remember that train before any real train.

I don't remember what I saw at the time, but it is recorded that in 1945 I ran away from home in Rochester, MN at 22 months, and they found me several hours later watching trains in the railroad yard two blocks away.

My earliest memory could be one of several - I really don't know what order they came in. Probably, all date from when I was about 3 or 4.

Laying in my crib at our home in South Minneapolis at night and hearing steam engines chuffing faster and faster as, I discovered later, they kicked cars in the Milwaukees yard a little over a half mile away.

Also from the window next to my crib, seeing "owl" streetcars, a half block away.

A family trip that took us thru a town where the road had a good vantage over a railroad yard, where there were numberous green steam locomotives. Today's kids identify a blue Thomas - I remember these as dark green. Though I didn't take any written notes at the time, more recent trips to Willmar, MN leads me to believe this was the Great Northern at Willmar.

I have other early recollections, but I think they were a couple or three years later.

I've been marked for life.

I lived near Lake Erie when I was 2 - 3 and my parents would take me down along the lake in the evening to watch a New York Central train go by (most of them had steam engines as I recall) and then I was able to go to sleep. They continued the practice when my family moved to Palmdale, CA and my parents would take me down by the A & W Rootbeer stand near downtown and we would watch the San Joaquin Daylight go by southbound while I drank my rootbeer. If I was lucky I would get to see a freight with SD-9s on it as well...

Well the earliest that I can put a date on would be Aug 1968, I had just turned 4 years old and we had a big flash flood in town that took out a bridge on what was then the Waterloo RR(former WCF&N)right acroos the street from my Grandmothers house. We were at Grandma's house and there was a terrible racket coming from the park across the street. The IC had brought in a steam powered pile driver to rebuild this bridge. It was cool then and still cool to see my uncle's pictures of it doing the work today.
My other early memories are of IC trains blocking the crossing on our way to church.

Scott Thein
Waterloo,Iowa

My earliest memory of a train is from 1941. At age 3, I clearly recall watching the switch engine position the afternoon train, with the sleeper on the rear, at the Y&MV depot on the bluffs overlooking the Mississippi River at Natchez, MS. I also recall boarding the sleeper en route home to Nashville, TN (don't ask for the routing). I seem to recall, the windows opened, but we were asked not to so the cooling (probably ice water) would work.

JD

Some of my earliest memories in general include lots of trains, most vivid in my oldest memories are the C&NW’s Green, Yellow and Black F-units. All I had to do was run to the window when I heard a train coming. My childhood home was near the C&NW’s Chicago – Green Bay main line.

Dennis

-Still living in the “North” part of the former Chicago and North Western

Watching trains from My Aunt's house near the Sunset Route in Liberty, TX @ age 2 1/2 *; sometime before I started school in 1954 I remember an 0-6-0 shoving boxcars across Caroline Street in Houston, TX on the San Antonio & Aransas Pass line (Bellaire Branch); Seeing the EB Sunset Limited with shiny new diesels being rescued by a 'black engine' east of Crosby, TX.

*I remember the trains. My Aunt reminds me that I had to put my toes on the top of the baseboard and pull my self up to see over the window sill. I would watch until after the caboose had passed.

My mom says I was afflicted while still in the womb because we lived right next to the GH&H RR on Eastwood St. Her only entertainment during the day was watching the trains pass.

RailNet802, over

My earliest memory of trains occurred in 1944 or 1945. My Mother would take me to go pick up my Dad from work in Arp Texas. Arp Tx. was located in the East Texas Oilfield. Sometimes, we would have to wait for an hour or so for Dad to come in from the oilfield.

The Missouri Pacific ran solid tank trains of crude oil from loading racks in the Arp area to somewhere back east. It seemed like they passed through Arp one right after another. The sould of the whistles thrilled me to no end and helped infect me with railroaditis.

Later on, in 1947, we moved to south Texas on the SP mainline between San Antonio and Houston. That completed the infection!

Yardclerk

My earliest memories would have to be watching C&O freight and passenger trains from our living room window. The trains were a little under a half-mile away, but the view at that time was unobstructed. This was the early 1950s--it was almost ten years before I realized that the engines powering the trains I saw during the day--BL2s--were not exactly the most common power on all railroads!

My earliest memories of watching trains was in the late 1940's. I can remember standing in my back yard waving to the fireman on a north bound PRR double header, on the Hudson Secondary, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. I have been hooked on trains ever since.

Pamela Aubele
Akron, OH

Two early vignettes stayed with me, on trains out of San Francisco. First, in a day coach I was running up and dowm the aisle pulling a toy on a string. It tangled around the shoe of a passenger and Mother had to come up and get it loose. The man seemed not to mind. But I was grounded. And not long after, on a night train to L.A. in the dining car our dinner was served just as the train pulled out. Now, I had a reputation as a persnickety eater. But the bowl of stew that was set in front of me sure smelled great, and I cleaned it up. For years later, Mother told people that that was the first time I ever ate a regular dinner.

I can't be sure of what my first "real" train memory was, but I think it occurred when I was six years old in 1950. My parents and I were going to spend a day on the beaches of Santa Cruz. We drove down the Old Bayshore Highway and I remember seeing one or two SP 2-8-0s and (as I later learned) the roundhouse goat (SPMW966). Right near Geneva Avenue was the roundhouse and I caught a quick glimpse of the "Garden Tracks" full of SP steam engines. There mayhave been an earlier encounter with trains, but if so, I can't remember. - Tony J.

Earliest recollection is from 1947. I was five and some when we made a trip to Albuquerque to visit relatives among other things. Took my grandmother's car, which was a big Chrysler with one of those windscoop aircoolers mounted in the window. Didn't help much. I think the water would evaporate in about five miles.

But back to the point at hand. I had an uncle who was a hostler (I think) for SP. he took us down to the roudhouse for a tour, including moving a loco a bit. I have just the faintest memory of it.

Best memory is of riding the Daylight from San Luis Obispo to SF a couple of years later. I recall encountering the engineer before we boarded. he told me I could ride in the cab. Foolish child that i was, I demurred. I have to assume he was not serious...

My grandfather had a strawberry patch in a vacant lot between a street and the tracks. One day my father, grandfather and me were examining the strawberries and along came a steam train. I ran towards the tracks and as we approached each other the whistle blew. That gave me a good scare, I did a 180 and headed, crying, for the comfort of my father. I remember standing by his leg with his hand on my head. From my reaction, I think that must have been my frist close encounter with a steam engine. Only recently have I realized the scare I must have given that engineer.

Born in 1976 and living a two blocks away from the NOW CSX Toledo Sub, i can remeber watching the "choo Choo's" down on the bottom of our little hill. Grandma lived about a block away and closer to the tracks. We would be down there for something and i would hear a train coming. I would run to the Radio room to watch the Second Generation Power roll through.

Grandparents once worked at the station in tis little area and had telegraphy equipment and such. There are my keepsakes now as both are gone and the home was sold. Fathere still owns house where i grew up and i can still see the trains from there.

Both of my boys (3 & 8) are now hooked to running to the front of the house at Grandpas to watch the trains.

About 1950, I remember sitting in the car at a Burbank, CA road crossing and seeing an SP Cab Forward roll by. That memory stuck in my hard drive forever