I Wish I Could Go Back In Time...

Hundreds of things. What did an EM-1 smell and feel like when she climbed the bridge with a coal train? What did those Pennsy HH-1s sound like coming up the grade? Was it really something to stand by Zhorseshoe Curve and watch four tracks of steam all busy at once? What about men coming home from wars? I'd have liked to see the B&O bring a regiment home to Moundsville in that spring a hundred and fifty years ago.

Most of all I'd love to go down to Powhatan the morning my grandpa heard about an emergency steam run. He rounded up all the grandkids he could get and all of us stood by the switch while the Mingo yard goat came down to get a coal train started. I don't even know how old I was. Born in August 1958, I missed the official end of steam, but I remember Pop lifting me up and showing me the snorting black engine, saying "Remember!" My sisters watched too, but they don't remember the time or the date or what engine it was. Since it was an off the books move just before the yard goat was scrapped, I may never be able to find out.

Me too. So many steam locomotives I would like to see, hear, and smell. Some diesels and electrics too like the GG1 and the FM Trainmaster. But most of all I wish I could go back in time to late 1969 so I buy a HEMI 'Cuda. 

Oh yes, I missed seeing the B&O mallets a half mile from where I grew up.  We must have waited for some to go by at the crossing when I was a baby in my mother's arms.  No seat belts or car seats in Dad's '49 Chevy.

Oh, boy..fantasyland....raiding every Western Auto and Sears for train sets before the

holidays, taking at least one train ride behind steam to travel out west (would still like to know if rental cars were easily available around RR stations, at least in larger cities...in Germany today, in my experience, they are), heck, take the CZ all the way through both ways,  would ride the deluxe narrow gauge train through from Alamosa to Durango, and the combine coach caboose from Pagosa Jct. to Pagosa Springs, ride the

little Kentucky L&N branch, as my mother used to do, out to the old home place, and

the list goes on and on...and beyond trains.....

There were still a few N&W steamers on the dead-line near the Virginian Station in the 1960s. I remember seeing the old rusty locomotives. Wish we had stopped. This would be a good reset point for my life. Looking back, I was a different person then.

Peter, I tried to model that terminal using RRTrack and just about went nutz. If I had the space and money, I'd build it in "O".

Missed it because I hadn't been born yet but it would have been nice to see the Roundhouse at Shaffer's crossing before they tore half of it down. The wrong half.

That is such a cool painting, Peter. I would love to hang it in the train room.

I wish I could go back in time.......I know that I must have past this building dozens of times while in my parents' car. Oh, how I wish I could have known the significance of this building and its uniqueness.

 

The Jersey Central freight building, in the South Bronx, unique because of its circular design.

Peter, here's a 15 minute video showing an HO model of that building and its operation.

http://trainmasters.tv/videos/...v-2013-edition-act-1

Great pic...love the loop of 0-31 around the building.

I know a Mad Man with a Box.

Larry

definitely.....the the sites,sounds,smells,and the feel of large steam locomotives rushing by or battling a hill,the sky full of four engined heavy bombers,seeing battleships in service,many famous people, or simply spending time with Grandparents that died when I was young.

I like to tell the original owner of my '69 road runner to store it away for me!

I'm lucky. I go "back in time" every time SP 4449 operates.

I'd like to go back in time to buy Lionel before J.L.Cowan sold it to Roy Cohn.

Bob, Thanks for the video link. Super layout, and super painting!  

Peter, Now that I am able to view all of this on the PC instead of my iPhone 4, I appreciate it even more!

There's zillions of fantastic RR experiences I'd love to have rubbed shoulders with, oh well.  But one thing that would be really neat would be to go back to a point, say around 1936, and hook up with the N&W's upper level leadership, and management.  Love to find out what made them "tick" the way they did.  What drove them to the level of perfection they achieved...not just with steam power, but the way it was operated in the context of the road itself.  Who really were Robert Smith, Clarence Pond, Hobart Scott, and the blue collars like Ben Delaney. Railroads are people and these folks were special and rather unique.  DPM once said N&W Dieselized two decades before the first GEEP hit the property. Indeed !  This had to be some kind of high water mark in American culture, and O. Winston Link really only scratched the surface on this. The N&W experience was truly happening on multiple levels, for those with eyes to see. Would I like to be hanging out in John Pritchard's drafting office in the summer of '36?...You bet !

Kathy Riley, Summer 1964.

No thanks... With my luck I'd mess up the space time continuum and when I returned to the present nothing would be the same.... And I don't know where Doc Brown lives.

Ron

There's a story there....

That is a totally cool building and complex. Not too far from where I grew up but a bit before my childhood unless I missed something. I was born in 1949.

I would have loved to see this scene in 1920s Baltimore, a lot different than today!

Jerry

Bob....thank you.....that is a great video on the Jersey Central Terminal.

Elliot....I believe the building was still in use by the RR until 61....I'm sure I passe it in the car coming from Manhattan over the 3rd Avenue Bridge on to Soutern Blvd, heading to Bruckner Blvd....

Wow, Jerry....where is the JFX in the picture!!!!!

(I lived in Mt Washington from 79-83 while doing my Internal Medicine residency at Maryland the the VA (which was at Loch Raven at the time)....To go to Maryland, I wopuld follow the North Central down the JFX and get off at Maryland Avenue. This picture looks like it was taken from a high rise a little east of the Belvidere Hotel, I think?

Peter

The river (the Jones Falls) is now under the JFX. For a good bit of its run from about Hamnden to the Harbor it's under the JFX.

Joness Falls/JFX

I can't find the site right now but there's a guy who kayaked from the Harbor up to Hamden and some of the pics from under the JFX in the tunnel the river runs thru are surreal.

Jerry

Jones Falls Tunnel 

Tunnel2

Jerry

If you mean within my own lifetime, I got to see pretty much everything I could have seen, growing up. I was born in 1969, so I missed a lot before I was born. And so much in my own lifetime I'd have loved to have seen but was never around where it was going on.

While I did see the Freedom Train on display (I was lucky enough to see it pulled by 4449 into my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida in November, 1976), we never took one photo, because my Mom said a postcard would be just as good. I so badly wished we'd taken photos.

But as for the rest of stuff going on that I never could have gotten to it:

• The Milwaukee Road, Pacific Extension. I now live within 1/2 a mile from the tracks to the Pacific beaches near Aberdeen, WA, I'd give almost anything to see all that when it was still here.
• The "Hillbilly World" amusement park at Hampton, VA which used the original ET&WNC roadbed through the Die River Gorge, including the twin bridges at the end: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDuZcdQdn54
• All the steam engines in scrap yards, especially the N&W Y6Bs which still survived into the 70s.
• Clinchfield # 1 when she was still running. I think she came through my hometown when I was a kid, but I didn't get the chance to see her.
• SRR steam program engines 722, 750, 2716 and 610. I never got to see any of these running.
• GG1s still running. I now realize I had been next to lines where they were still running twice, before they quit using them, but I never saw one operating.
• The branch line from Tallahassee to Apalachicola, Florida which was one of the oldest RR lines in Florida. I saw the tracks a few times when I was in junior high as it wrapped behind the school. The bus went over it every day going to school. But I never saw a single train moving on it. I really wish I had. It's a bike trail now...

Outside my own lifetime, well, that list would be really long. But topping it would have to riding and photographing the ET&WNC RR 3-footer.

Having been born in 1942, I WAS back in time. Thinking back, going from radio to TV was the most memorable "wonder" for me ( even though there were only 5 channels for us, most locations got 3 or less).

Me too! I wanna ride in that gondola at the 2:10 mark ( the one at 2:24 wouldn't be bad either). I wonder what class that seating is anyway?

I'd love to go back to Lehigh Gap, Pa in the 20's-40's and chase the CNJ, LV, and LNE. There would also be steam on the Chestnut Ridge and New Jersey Zinc Company Plants.

Yes, it would be fun to go back in time, but only if I could then return to this time.  There are things I would like to see again.  The Santa Fe Super Chief, a Big Boy pulling a train out of the station in Utah and heading up the Wasatch front, B-36s taking off on SAC Patrols, Bonneville Salt Flats when they were long and the place, and LSR cars ran every day during the season.

But I would want to come back.  Too many things I do remember: Polio.  Only three TV stations.  Greasing cars, brakes that pulled, near-toxic echausts that made your eyes water.  And de-frosting the fridge, etc. 

 B-36s taking off on SAC Patrols,

now that is something I want to see, and hear!and as much of the old things I'd love to experience, there are plenty of the bad I wouldn't.

Another thing I would do if I could go back in time is take pictures of as many railroad specific structures as possible. Yes, there are loads of pictures and detailed drawings of locomotives and rolling stock but outside the Pennsy there seems to be very little documentation on railroad structures some of which have passed into history. I wanted to make a model of the roundhouse at Rensselaer and even the NYSC Historical Society doesn't have any photos of it. 

When I was a kid, my family lived in Huntingdon, PA, right on the PRR 4-track main line.  I spent a lot of time down there at the station during the steam/diesel transition years, but being only about eight years old, I only took a few pictures.  I'd love to go back to about 1952 with a Leica and a duffel bag full of film, and get all those shots I missed the first time.

Further back, I'd like to travel back to about 1929 and spend a couple of photography months in Mount Carmel, PA, where my parents grew up and where I was born.  It was arguably the busiest coal mining town in Pennsylvania, and was served by three class 1 railroads, the Reading, the PRR and the Lehigh Valley (which had a busy switching yard just on the edge of town).  How I would love to see firsthand all that railroading action that I only know from my father's stories!

Oh, and to you guys complaining about how few TV channels you had in those awful old days: I remember when we had zero television stations.  And not only weren't we suffering, I can see now in retrospect that we were a lot better off without them!

Going to work with my dad late 50 's / early 60 's Freight agent CNJ. Riding track car with President CNJ (1960) Dover,NJ.Riding the RPO FROM Annadale NJ to Allentown ,PA with crew. 

So many things back in the day

So I'm guessing you love the Jimmy Stewart movie, Strategic Air Command?  Some really great B-36 footage in that movie.

Ron

you bet!

  Given the possibility of time travel I can think of a number of vintage seasons* I wouldn't mind visiting. 

 1. 8 October 1829 - Rainhill, England to watch The Rocket get put through her paces.

 2. Trackside on the Boston & Maine in 1848 to watch the Antelope blow past at 60 mph.

 3. Any day in 1864 at Alexandria, Virginia so I could just walk around the USMRR shop complex.

 4. 1 A.M. on the morning of 3 May 1867 - at the east facing of Summit tunnel when the tunneling crews broke through.

 5. From dawn to dusk 27 April 1869 on the Central Pacific mainline to watch Crocker's men lay over 10 miles of track.

 6. Anywhere trackside on the IC on that weekend in 1886 when the gandydancers re-gauged the entire system.

 7. Trackside anywhere on the stretch of NYC track where 999 was turned loose and allowed to roll.

 9. Safely covered in mud and water in the western half of Skunk Lake on 1 September 1894 to watch (and possibly offer assistance to) Porter John Blair and the other crew members of the Limited, Train #4 roll to a stop and get their charges into the water and safely away from the Great Hinckley Fire.

 ...there are many others but these would be among my first choices.

*for those who remember the Kutter and Moore science fiction short story

Way too many things I'd like to have a chance to go back in time and experience to list here.

As to the original post and that Bronx Terminal video:

What an amazing mini-layout.  The trackwork itself is simply astounding.

The video linked above was very well done and very professional.  Top work!

Good thread.

Hi Peter: Cool topic • "The Jersey Central freight building, in the South Bronx, unique because of its circular design".

     I do the same thing, there was a switch tower, near my home, and every time I drive past this location, I remember the tower.

Thanks for sharing this story.

Gary

We were living in Cheyenne or Bismark at the time, and we drove a long way (for a six-year old, anyway) to an air base.  My dad had been a bomber pilot during WWII and was kept in the reserves after the war, but by the early '50s security was so tight they still would not allow him anywhere near first-line strategic bombers although we could go on the base to the PX, etc.  I remember being very mpressed that there might be spioes watching us right then.  My dad had a friend who was in SAC, and he wore this wonderful blue uniform that greatly impressed me, and he came out and showed us where to park with a great view of the end of the runway as maybe a dozen B-36s flew over right out ahead of us.  It was one of the big events of my childhood.  They were so long and thin and big and the sound was incredible.  

I've always been interested in the railroads of the early 1850s.  There were many different types of engines running then.  Would have also been cool to see the building of the UP Transcon in the late 1860s.

Kent in SD