Nostalgia & History > Earliest Railroad Memory

I’m pretty sure that most of us fell in love with trains at an early age. What was your first experience with trains?
For me, it was in Highland Park, CA watching the UP Pasadena local cross Avenue 57. I was very young and my dad stopped his brand new 69’ VW bus at the wig wag while an SW something rolled by with a couple of boxcars and a caboose.
“Those days are gone forever, over a long time ago……”

I was 2 when I ran away from home to watch trains two blocks from home.

Also, I remember lying in my crib and hearing steam locomotives kicking cars.

-LD



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/22/23 23:13 by LarryDoyle.

Born in San Bernardino in 1966...nuff said.

Adam

Lying in bed at a home in Wolf Creek, Oreogn, listening to the cacaphony of steam engines loosing their grip and regraining traction on the Wolf Creek loop.

1944, when I was five, taking the L & N from Louisville to Knoxville. I had the top bunk on a Pullman car and my grandmother was on the bottom.  I would stay awake as long as I could looking out the small window area as we went through all the small towns at night and listening to the RR cossings ding-ding and looking at the lights. 

Born in '65 so my mom took me to the circus at Madison Square Garden, I remember boarding the train in Matawan, NJ I remember orange and blue F units and I remember the train running along the NJ turnpike.  So figue it was '67 before the Aldene plan, which of course I had no idea about then LOL.  

I can remember wandering down to the ATSF tracks when I was 4 or 5 years old(about 1955) some 3 blocks south of where I lived and just stand there watching the signals ( still had semaphores and searchlights too) hoping the ABS system there at Garden City, Kansas would show the approach of a train. (even at night)  Probably got in trouble not telling my folks where I was....but knew better than to play on the tracks or lay stuff on the rails.   I would go the the depot where the train boards would show when the passenger trains would arrive and listen to the telegraph sound box chatter away.   



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/23 06:03 by atsfer.

I honestly don't remember the first.  Our house where I lived until I was 4 was across about a half mile from the Missouri Pacific line to KC and also a trolley line across the street.  My Dad was an engineer on the Frisco and my Mom took me to watch him go by uphill from Lindenwood yard (St. Louis).  I was a liitle guy, but after that I was hooked.  We would frequently go to watch the spectacle often and 3 different spots and I couldn't get enough of it.
We moved in 1945 to Maplewood,MO, again on the MP Main which was several blocks from the house and it swung a wide curve through Maplewood on its way up Kirkwood hill which started in Webster Groves.  I could lie in bed and hear the freights roaring through Maplewood with a helper engine getting a run for the grade.  I could hear them fighting for a good ten minutes laying in bed with the window open.  I could also hear the Frisco 2-8-0s kicking cars in the yard and their freights getting out and working up the hill.
Then doom and gloom struck and the damned diesels ruined every thing.

Grew up in Tamaqua,Pa 'blessed' with 2 railroads during the transition from steam to diesel and moved often but somehow always near tracks, including on a street with homes facing the RR on a street named Railroad St. I was befriended by numerous RR employees who nurtured my passion likely as result of watching me being trackside in any weather. I'll add that none of my sibblings or cousins likewise exposed ever bit the railroad hook, and that I seem to have been the only passionate fan in the town. That is, I never had to compete for cab rides, tower visits, crew calling offices, etc.  



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/23/23 06:15 by lne655.

Southern Pacific 1025 running on street trackage in Sebastopol California. It was on old Petaluma & Santa Rosa railroad trackage. This would be 69-70, I came along in 1962.
The loco was only on P&SR for a year or 2 & maybe the only Alco to be on the NWP. It went to Visalia Electric about its short stint on P&SR.
The best thing for me is I received an Atlas HO scale model of that someone had detailed up last year. 

Tim
Hanesworth

Born in 1942, and I fully remember my dad taking me to the big Central RR of New Jersey freight yard in Cranford, NJ,where we lived, in 1944 & 1945. Sat in our 1940 Ford, at the Yard Office parking lot, and watched the big 0-8-0 switching. Also remember the famous Reading Crusader streamlined steam locomotive & passenger train racing westbound on the through track of the four track mainline. Boy was that train fast. Also remember lots of commuter passenger trains with pacifics and camel-backs.

Going to see the Cincinnatian when it was on dispay at B&O Silver Spring Station.

B&OBill

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Well, it sort of goes like this.  I've been told, and vaugley remember, being put on the "Western Star" (maybe the "Oriental Limited,) in St. Paul, MN, at age five and riding to Litchfield, MN.  A more vivid memory is my grandfather taking me down to the Litchfield depot and watching the "Fast Mail" blow throuogh town at 80 mph.  Try as I might, I could never see when the mail sack got grabbed by the train.  I've been a railfan ever since.  

Nick Tharalson,
Marion, IA

A ride on the L&N Humming Bird, Montgomery-New Orleans, with my parents in 1957. I was a small child being admitted to the Ochsner Hospital. I remember it well, maybe because I liked trains even then (my dad worked for the GM&O), maybe because I was hoping that the doctors in New Orleans could fix me up.  

My medical bills had pretty much put my parents in the poor house. Somebody on the GM&O notified the railroad's president, Glen Brock, of the situation. He telegrammed the president of the L&N, who I think was John Tilford. He authorized a pass valid on any train, any date, any accommodation. Imagine that now. 

Every Sunday, my dad took me at age 4 to the local depot to watch the passenger train out of Boston deliver the Sunday papers. One day the regular crew asked dad if i would like a ride to the next depot. So off we went with me sitting on the Sunday paper piles in the open door of the baggage car . Dad was on one side and the brakeman was on the other side of me.  I was hooked!

Not sure of the year, but I was born in 1947. I recall that at a very early age Dad took us to a spot that overlooked the yards in Rochester NY, I recall seeing a steam locomotive, which may or may not have been a Hudson, but in my mind, it has definitely morphed into a Hudson! I also have memories from childhood of visiting my Aunt and Uncles farm in Campbell NY (in the southern tier) and seeing steam locomotives running on what was either the Erie or the Lackawanna thru their fields, trains that were likely headed for Buffalo, I would guess. 

In the early 1960s. I believe I was three. My mom, older brother, and I road the GM&O from Carlinville to Alton, IL. It's probably no more than 30-35 miles by rail. My aunt picked us up at the depot there. Later that afternoon/early evening, Dad drove down and picked us up at her home.

I can still see him sitting on a baggage cart on the platform, watching as the train pulled away.

Departing Buffalo Central Terminal on the eastbound Empire State express, circa 1950.

Art House

Born 1940 and we lived with my mothers parents in Cisco Tx when dad was in the army 1944-45.  My grandfather  "Pa" loved trains.  Every day after supper, or dinner if you please, he would take me to the T&P/MKT depot to watch trains.  There was always one in town during those war years.  The part I liked best was when they would start a train and the exhaust would get heavy.  You could hear them all over town ..  Many times when eating I would hear one and tell Pa we had to go even though we had just barely begun to eat.  And, he would say, there will be one when we get there after supper.
He also took me on my first train ride from Cisco to Whitney , Tx on the Katy.
Thank goodness he did all that with me..

I'm 3 years old in 1947 walking beside a long, yellow train with my dad at the C&NW terminal in Chicago and being disappointed that there was no steam engine at the head of the train. Much later learned that it was UP's City of Denver.

Tom