Talk about the Good Ole Days

Either that, or it's some new form of Haiku I'm unfamiliar with 

this is possibly the most interesting reading i have seen on this forum,since i joined online. keep it going -my thanks to those who have posted.-jim

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pV3Ydb1yazg

A wee bit of the 40's.

Rick

The march of time has made some things better and some things worse.  It's all in the eye of the beholder.

My parents were born in 1941 and 1942, and they loved being teens in the 50s. Think Happy Days.

They also remark about the health fears that were eradicated by the time I came around in 1964.  Polio was a huge fear of their parents, so much so my grandpa really resisted allowing my mother to swim in public pools and lakes.  Small pox, measles, mumps, and many other childhoodl diseases were pretty much gone by the time I was born.

To me, the thing that makes today the good old days is the miracle of modern medicine.  I'm having back surgery on Tuesday - full fusion and only require 2 nights in the hospital and a few weeks off work due to minimally invasive surgery.  How many arthritic knees and hips have been replaced and eliminated pain and prolonged an active life?  The list of healthcare improvements is seemingly endless.  In the past, people lived with pain, limitations, or they just died.

On the flip side, I think things WERE simpler because information flowed much more slowly.  A handful of TV stations, and they didn't even broadcast all day.  No internet, no cable, no cell phones, no smartphones.  Less stress from overload, but perhaps more stress from waiting for answers.

What saddens me most is the decimation of the real middle class through the reduction in good-paying manufacturing jobs.  Maybe we'll find a fix for this to a better way.  After all, good-paying factory jobs were/are tough jobs.  And, I guess with fewer smokestacks, the air and water is cleaner.  But, for now, I think those days when steel mills were billowing steam into the sky were better times.

Jeff - pennsy484 in part wrote this: 

"I would appreciate and love to hear some first hand recollections of those days from some of the forum members who lived through them, and train related stories would sure be great too!

So, anyone interested in sharing your memories with us?"

I don't see where he asked younger folks to write long diatribes criticizing what older folks said.  I was born in 1937 so went through school in the 40s and 50s. I graduated from high school in 1955 and college in 1959.  Those were wonderful days to be that age and no one will convince me that today things are the same because guess what, I am living these days too.

.....

Dennis

The hobo camps that we portray on our model railroads were a sign that all was not well back then...life in the hobo camps was brutal, difficult and oftimes short, similar to todays 'urban outdoorsmen' or 'domestically challenged.'

Well put, Dennis. Yes, we are living in this age as well...and it makes me sad when I see a teen staring like a zombie at a hand-held, while a parade is passing by.

I was prepared to tell about my experiences during the time of late steam early diesel.  That is not to say that my folks were enjoying that same happiness.  We were a family of limited means and my parents both worked all the time I was growing up.  My father traveled for the Pere Marquette and then the C&O which meant he was only home on weekends, arriving Saturday morning and leaving again early Sunday afternoon.  I am grateful to them for how good I had it.  I am not saying that everybody had it good but I am saying I was happy with little.  I would like to tell some good stories but I have kind of lost the desire after reading some of the crap put on here by some of you.

.....

Dennis

Dennis,

You are precisely in the group of people who I would live to hear stories from.  Someone mentioned that steam trains were commonplace back then.  See that is where I have no idea about how it was being young and experiencing everyday life as is relates to trains.  I would love to hang out with some of you guys and listen to your train related stories from way back when.  This is a perfect forum for that.

Sure, there are more weighty topics in the world, but this is a train forum, and we all love trains.  This is an escape of sorts for me.  It is a fight club for others.  Whatever.  No need to get sucked in to that I have learned and that is the high the fight clubbers are seeking.  I wouldn't give a rat's behind for what my own peers here think of the 40's.  Those of you that were there, that's who we want to hear from!

Dennis, I'd love to hear your train stories.  Maybe 30 or 40 years from now I'll be passing them along to youngsters on line!

Thanks again to all of you who continue to share these invaluable stories!

Jeff,

I remember getting my butt tore up when I came home covered in coal dust after playing around the IC roundhouse.My mother hated washing my clothes with coal dust in them. She said it made all the clothes dingy. There was an old 0-6-0 that sat outside the roundhouse that we would play on. The IC employees welcomed us.

Does that count as a train story?

Malcolm

My grandfather was born in Chicago in 1924, the youngest of three children, he often told me many stories of life back then as he experienced it.  One such story was how he and his brother would go down to the railyards ( forget which one) and they would collect coal that had fallen off the tenders to take home for heat and to cook with.  After some time the crews got so use to seeing these kids and seeing what they were doing that when they would pass by they would toss shovel fulls of coal off to them.  Sometimes the train would be stopped by where they were and crews would let the him and other kids climb up and see things in the cab and ask questions and such.  He always was amazed at how friendly those guys were.  The times were hard to put it very mildly, but everyone did there best and worked hard when they got work.

     Then after the attack at Pearl Harbor in 41' he and his brother decided to enlist, my grandfather had to wait until August of 42' but he joined the Army Air Corps. and flew as a waist gunner on B-24 Liberators.  After coming home he joined the Chicago Police Dept and served the city until 1986.  He told me about many things he saw change through the years, the biggest was attitudes.  He noticed how it went from one of greatfulness to one of entitlement.

That's funny!  I was telling my father about this thread.  He isn't a train guy.  He had his Lionel set, and that got me started, but he doesn't have the bug like us.  Anyway, I said, tell me your recollections about the steam trains.  He said, I just remember them being dirty!  Haha.  That cracked me up.  Also, they really had no money, and didn't take the train anywhere at all ever, pretty much.  He did take it to boot camp though!  That he remembered!

You are right, I did find this site to be quick interesting and entertaining!

These photos are definetly worth a re-visit in this thread.  These photos capture what we are "all" talking about here......life.  Great for some, good for many and at times hard for us all. 

http://blogs.denverpost.com/ca...from-1939-1943/2363/

Another memory of mine is from Tylertown, MS. In 1958-59 my cousins and I would go to the ice house down by the tracks because they had a snowcone stand.

While sitting there one day the GM&O local and the Fernwood Columbia & Gulf were both in town. The FC&G crew was getting a snow-cone and offered a cab ride in the SW-1. We took it! Not to be outdone the GM&O crew gave us a tour of the RS-2 on the local. What a day it was.

My only regret was not going back in my teenage years and take 100s of photographs. Only the memories remain now, all the tracks are gone and those railroads do not exist any longer. The GM&O & FC&G brick depots survive to this day. One is a convenience store and the other a feed store.

Malcolm

OK. Taking that as an invitation, here's a story from the 1950's and my life very near and around trains. No proselytizing for the good ol' days. Just a story about dangerous play.

As an early-adolescent, two friends, Roger and Glenn, and I would often climb down a steep hillside under the Kennywood Bridge that spanned a deep canyon between Duquesne Place and Kennywood Park, in West Mifflin, PA. At the bottom was spread out a wide humpyard, always packed with freight cars. We'd go there to spend hours, or as long as we could before a RR worker would yell at us to get the heckout; then, we'd jet up the hillside as fast as we could.

One particularly memorable day, after our climbing atop line after line of cabooses and boxcars, running their full lengths and jumping or climbing between them, Roger decided to finally (we had always wanted to do so but didn't dare) to climb aboard a coal hopper (as we called them.) It was a well-weathered brown, and its inside was covered in a complete coating of rust. Quite sure of his strength, Roger decided he would slide down one of the end walls to see if he could slip out the chute door at the bottom.

The moment he reached the bottom and began trying to open the door to stick his feet through, our car's line of cars on that siding was coupled onto by a locomotive (it may have been a diesel because we heard nothing coming beforehand,) jerking the whole train backward with quite a start. The jolt nearly knocked Roger all the way into the triangular pit at the bottom. He tried desparately to scramble up the rusty sides of the car, but the rust acted like a lubricant, and he could make no progress whatsoever. Then, the cars began to move down the tracks. Glenn and I, who had been perched atop the end of the car, began yelling nearly hysterically at Roger to try harder to reach our outstretched hands. Finally, bending at the waist and reaching inside as far as we could go without having our thighs go inside too, Glenn got hold of two of Roger's fingers, and I got hold of his forearm. We yanked Roger up real hard, with all our combined might, climbed down the ladders at the end of the car, and acting like the stupid scared dummes we were, scrambled right up the hillside, fast as we could, not stopping until we reached my house two blocks away. We lay on the lawn, looking up at the sky, exhausted and much, much the wiser.

We never went back there again.

Frank M. of Duquesne Place, PA

Okay... I'm gonna post this really quickly, then SCRAM so I don't get hit by flying objects :  On a dad and lad outing when I was about 10 (40 years ago... sigh), we stopped by a rail yard here in Dallas.  There was a gentleman who was maneuvering an "F" unit, can't remember what type.  We did talk with him and he invited me into the cab.  I got to nudge the thing forward down the track a tiny piece (yes, the engineer was right there to make sure nothing went awry - yes, it was definitely a memorable few minutes for that 10 year old).  Later!!

Carlton

A shout out to fellow Chicagoan Jay Jay:

I grew up, in the late 50's and 60's, about a block west of the GTW's Elsdon station. Just missed regular steam service, but I remember the fan trippers' including a big Northern with Vanderbilt tender (not sure if it was GTW or CN), a Reading 4-8-4, Dick Jensen's GTW Pacific and a GTW Mikado. Road on a fantrip with the Mike in 1968 out of Dearborn station. I recall it having some mechanical problems that caused us to get back to Chicago well after midnight, and the next day was a school day to boot. When I'd hear those rarely occurring steam whistles, I'd be out of the house like a shot running down to trackside.

I remember the diesels more clearly. First in the beautiful green and yellow: F3's and GP9's and later the mod-scheme in red, white and black, then the change to red and blue. 

One of our neighbor's was an engineer for the GTW, Bob Carter, but somehow I never thought to ask him about his work. It was quite typical for me to fall asleep to the sound of cars being kick switched in the rail yard.

Was back in the neighborhood about 15 years ago and, as I recall, everything was gone except for one through track. The place where the roundhouse stood is now a shopping mall, the station, adjacent tavern, and the crossing gate shack on 55th street long gone even then. I remember taking the 55th street bus home from Gage Park High School hoping we'd get stuck by a train so I could watch the parade or freight cars.

Wonderful times, wonderful memories.    

I was born in 1936 and consequently saw a lot of steam powered trains until the diesels took over.  I lived near a branch line of the Atlantic Coast Line that ran from my town (Portsmouth, Va. to Rocky Mount, N.C. where it joined the ACL main line.  I rode trains on that line quite a few times with my grandmother all through WWII when gas and tires etc. were rationed.  The Seaboard Airline also came to our town and we had the Norfolk and Portsmouth Belt Line Railroad that connected all the lines in the area.  We were within bicycle riding distance of the N&W and Virginian main lines as well.  The late 40's and 50's seemed like the best time for toy trains with Lionel and Flyer both.  Our local Sears store had a big train display every year and some of the hardware stores carried trains as well.  Our local grocery store near home put a Lionel Layout in their window for Christmas.  It was the steam turbine and three green streamlined passenger cars.  That was the first layout I ever saw with scenery and all.  I also experienced all the fun things related here when growing up.  We played ball and all the kid games you can think of plus we were near a river so we could go out in rowboats too.  Life was wonderful for most kids I knew then or at least to some of us.  As Gen. Eisenhower once said, "we were poor but the glory of it was that we didn't know it."  I never had an expensive Lionel train until I was grown.  Our folks just couldn't afford such things but I did get a Marx wind up set and when I was a teenager, a benevolent uncle of mine gave me a Lionel starter set with a die cast engine.  That was the high point of my childhood train related things.  My friends and I used to be railfans also but we weren't called that then.  We were just kids hanging around the railroad and it was frowned on by the railroad police.  We had no cameras sadly but did keep log books for a while on the trains we saw.  I wish I had them now.  If I had a camera back then well you know how it goes.  Hindsight is 20/20.

Ray

In spite of Korling, I will finally press on:

In Battle Creek we lived close enough to the train station to walk to it.  So when my Dad's train was due in I would walk down to meet him and try to lug his brief case while he carried the big suit case.  He would let me carry it for a while but seeing me struggle would say it was easier for him to carry both so he was more balanced.  Probably true too.  I was nine or ten then.

My Dad always got off the train in a suit and tie and hat.  Most all men dressed like that back in the 40s and into the 50s.  I even dressed like that on an important date in college in the late 50s.

When I was little, it was my Dad's habit when he got off the train to give me a kiss on the lips.  I still remember the big smile on his face the day I stuck out my hand to give him a hand shake letting him know I now thought I was too big to be kissed by my father.    I'm not sure how old I was then.

Back then I didn't know a Hudson from camel.  When I was small I would stand back and hold my ears as those big puffing monsters clanged into the station.  I was facinated though by all the goings on of the drivers and rods.  When the train started to leave, soot would come raining down on you with each puff.

.....

Dennis

     I grew up in Northbrook, IL along the Milwaukee Road's C&M (Chicago & Milwaukee) division in the 1950's. My Grandpa had retired from the Milwaukee (freight and passenger conductor) and my Dad worked at the LaSalle St. Station in downtown Chicago as a gateman (the guy who checks your tickets and announces the trains, not the giant blue Lionel guy who pops out of the shack ) so we were a railroad family. Dad knew a lot of the MILW train crews so I actually had more adult RR friends than kid friends by the time I started kindergarten. I only have a few memories of seeing the last of the MILW steamers when they were still working freights and the occasional commuter train. My Mom got a teaching job at a Catholic grade school in Chicago when I was in first grade (1954-55) so I went to school there and we rode the Milwaukee commuter trains back and forth every day. That was long before the stainless steel bi-level cars, the commuter coaches were all old orange and maroon heavyweight cars that had seen better days. The older conductors had worked with my Grandpa so they knew my Mom and they seldom punched our tickets.  Although I can't share recollections of the steam-powered Hiawathas racing through town I got a good education on the entire MILW diesel inventory as a young train-watcher. EMD E and F units, Geeps, SW's, Alco RS's, FM C-Liners - if it burned diesel and the Milwaukee had 'em, I saw 'em go through town. And of course the famous Hiawathas in both the traditional MILW orange and maroon and then the UP gray and yellow after 1955.

     Couple times a year my Grandma, uncle and I would ride the train to Galesburg, IL to visit my great-aunt Kate. That was always a fun trip. We usually rode the Burlington (a morning Zephyr, can't remember the name) out on Sunday AM and came back on the Santa Fe's Chicagoan in the evening. Galesburg was/is a major RR town so we had great train-watching on both the CB&Q and AT&SF all day long. I loved riding the trains of both RR's, stainless steel cars with nice seats and friendly crews. The Chicagoan usually had a grill/cafe car for dining and my evening meal would usually be a fresh-made BLT sandwich with fries.  

     Going down Memory Lane here I would be remiss if I did not also mention the shopping trips I took with my Grandma on the North Shore Line interurban from Northbrook to downtown Chicago. Old red and green heavyweight cars with rattan-upholstered seats. Skokie Valley line to Howard St. in Evanston and then onto the CTA's "L" tracks to enter downtown (aka "The Loop"). The North Shore was a very well maintained RR and those old cars used to really fly down the tracks on the Skokie Valley. I could always count on visiting Marshall Field's toy department at some point during Grandma's shopping trip and if I was lucky maybe she'd buy me something in a Lionel box.

     Not all my memories of growing up are good ones. My Dad died of a heart attack in 1954 and later my Mom remarried and she and my stepfather fought a lot (fought, not argued). Fortunately I had a loving Grandma and uncle who let me live with them when things got really bad. Overall my childhood was fun, my friends and I really WERE a lot  like the kids on "Leave It To Beaver", and the local railroads played a big part in providing me with pleasant memories as well as a lifelong interest in railroading.

Rich, thanks for reopening this. Many good reminiscences here! 

My mother often talked about growing up right next to the B&M tracks during the depression of the 1930's. She related how she used to look for coal along those tracks, and how a kind engineer would often hand her his copy of the Boston Herald Traveler from the cab when the train stopped for passengers. The coal she found no doubt helped keep the family warm during those cold and bleak New England winters, when money was so scarce. 

Myself, my Dad and my Grandpa were all born withing 15 miles of Erwin TN. The town is here mainly due to the Clinchfield railroad company. Now CSX. Grandpa was  born 1898. After he was released from the Army Troop A 8th Cavalry in Texas he returned to Erwin and worked 25 years for the Clinchfield railroad. My Dad born 1916 after getting out of the Army returned to Erwin and worked 10 years for the Clinchfield. I was born in 1948 and that's where the railroad employment stopped. I heard many many stories growing up from them and I'm sure it has a lot to do with my avid interest in trains now.

I looked at one of Grandpas old pay stubs , just for grins, his total pay for 1943 was $448.72 and the income tax withheld was $8.00.

This thread brings some of stories back to me.  I wasn't going to even post until Rich fixed it. Thanks Rich.

Larry

My mother just passed away at age 90, 2 months ago in September.

I am 50 years old, as she had me when she was 40.

Her father a WWI vet, who I remember vividly was a train conductor on the EL in both Brooklyn and Queens. He lost his hearing when someone threw a cherry bomb on the Fourth of July into an EL train he was on. She told me that she worked in the Brooklyn Navy Yard and saw troops leaving for WWII as well as coming back.

One of the most heart breaking stories she ever told me, was when during WWII she went out on her porch and waved to her neighbor...the neighbor walked over and told my mother they had just gotten word their son was killed on Anzio Beach.

My parents both were into roller skating as teenagers and in their 20's as well and my dad was a fan of big band music and I still have all his 78 RPM big band records. He also kept a baseball and football scrapbook as a kid and I have that as well with all kinds of baseball newspaper clippings from the 1930s and 1940s including a baseball program from those days!

My Dad loved Lionel trains and I still have the Alco Santa Fe passenger set and Scout Freight set they got me for Christmas in 1965-1967.

My Mom had 11 miscarriages because her doctor back in the 50's kept giving her what he said was a polio shot each time she got pregnant....he was killing her babies...

She also lost one baby after she slipped in the bath tub and lost my brother a week after he was born. In fact, she delivered my brother herself, as she went into labor unexpected while driving thru NYC and ended up in an inner city hospital. When she started screaming that the baby was coming out backwards (breach) the inner city nurses told her to shut her big mouth and then shut off the lights and closed the door....the doctor never showed up until later and she delivered the baby herself "in the dark" and "as a breach baby", which she turned around herself.

I was the only baby that survived.

Here is a picture of my Mom from May of this year for her 90th Birthday, unfortunately 4 months before she passed from a blocked intestine that went untreated by her doctor while she was in the hospital for a week. 

Good morning all, I'm thrilled that this thread was reopened again, these stories are beautiful. I'm enjoying them so much.

Thanks Rich for bringing it back.

Alex

A few more Chicago railroad memories from my younger days.

The first isn't quite a memory as I was no more than 4 at the time. I was told by my the uncle, who inspired my love of trains, that we got to ride in the cab of an EMD SW switcher in the CB&Q's Western Avenue yard. At the time we lived in the basement apartment of my grandparent's house just south of the huge grain elevator that was next to the Q. About 15 years later I would catch the commuter train for a summer job in Naperville at the nearby Western Avenue station. These were pulled by the great silver sided E units. Those black, grey and red switchers were still there doing their work. An earlier memory of the E's was my dad parking the car on South Canal Street next to the "Zephyr Pit", where they would glide onto the turntable for a spin. As the Burlington ran them elephant style this was done at the end of every run, except for the push-pull commuter runs. 

Another quite early memory is of an Indiana Harbor Belt SW pulling a dead Santa Fe steamer past a schoolyard ballgame, presumably to the scrap yard. From a half block away those drivers still looked enormous. As I was perhaps 7 or 8 years old at the time, I can't say what class or number the loco was, but it could have been one of the Hudsons' with 84" drivers. This was in 1959 or 60'.

When I was 17 (not the start of a favorite Sinatra song), I remember taking the bus down to the area south of the Loop on a hot summer day for some railfaning with my woefully inadequate Kodak Instamatic. My patrolling the Roosevelt Rd. overpass was mostly unproductive, as I was there during the mid-day lull, but a couple of items caught my attention. Near 16th St., Dick Jensen's GTW 4-6-2 was stored on a siding along with the tender from either a Pennsy J class or Q class steamer. It was painted MoW yellow and was just huge. Of course I couldn't resist climbing up into the coal bucker of the tender and the cab of the steam engine for a look see. The shear size of the auger screw in  that tender remains in my mind to this day. Either no one noticed me or no one thought this unusual, as I was not challenged during this unauthorized inspection.

Shortly afterwards Fall arrived and with it college at IIT next to the Rock Island line on Chicago's south side. Although these years saw pretty limited railfan activities, a few memories come to mind. However, I'll have to get to them in a later post.        

"Kickers and pickers".  A fellow I worked with recounted this story from those times.  He grew up in Del Ray Michigan where railroad tracks went through with trains hauling coal, and moving quite slowly.  The "kickers" were the kids that would jump from the overpass down onto the coal in the passing hopper cars and sit on their bottoms kicking coal over the edge to the track side.  The "pickers" were kids hauling their wagons along the tracks gathering the coal to take home to heat the house.

More stories later . . . .

.....

Dennis

I was born in Adrian, Michigan in 1937 but by the time to where I can remember anything we lived in Jackson, Michigan.  Train tracks ran behind our house that must have been an industry spur because trains puffed by there only occasionally.  This meant us neighborhood kids could play back there without getting kicked out.  We would always get a wave from the engineer or fireman which ever way the train was puffing past.  At that time I was 4-5 years old.  At that age I remember we would throw the ballast rocks up to the top of the telephone poles trying to hit the glass insulators and we would occasionally break one.  Little vandals we were.  A little distance east from our backyard was a coal yard and that is where I tried my first cigarette.  One of the neighborhood kids had "hocked" some cigarettes from his house and we lit up.  How surprised I was when smoke wouldn't get in my mouth.  One of the older kids had to tell me your supposed to suck on it, not blow on it.  I got another surprise when I did . . . choke, . . . cough . . . hack . . ..  Being dirty from coal dust and smelling cigarettes on me my mother gave me a stern warning.

.....

Dennis

I've told this one before, but it goes with the subject: I was born in '52, and I still have a memory of being in Baltimore's Inner Harbor and my father carrying me to see a steam engine working the Docks. It was winter, the engine was HUGE - HOT - and smelled like my mother's steam iron and my Grandmother's coal furnace. I remember wondering where the "coal car" (tender) was. I waved to the engineer until he finally waved back. When I was in Cub Scouts a few years after, I bought a Varney "Little Joe" kit with birthday money because it was the engine I saw that day. I have the MTH version for the same reason. The Northeast Corridor was a few blocks north of my house and I used to watch GG-1's fly by at "Bochex Park" (not sure of the spelling). One of the appeals of this particular park was that there was an old Streetcar (it may have been a Birney) for the kids to play on. Old people would sit on it as well, probably taking a ride in their memories. One last one: I remember when a contrail would appear in the sky, the yell went up:"Jet Plane!", and EVERYONE would come out in their backyards to marvel at these things that flew without propellars. Hmm, I think I must be getting old!

Thanks for re-opening the thread Rich.  I have many stories from my grandparents and now I have many more.  It's such a thrill to hear all these stories from all of you, thanks to everyone who is sharing them....I appreciate it.

My father rode the trains during the depression hobo Style.  He told me of one occasion where he got caught and ended up in the 'Dehoco', which I think is an acronym for the Detroit House of Corrections (a jail).  He spent 10 days in jail and caught the next freight train back to Flint, where he lived.

He also taught us boys some safety concerns if we ever lived hobo style.  He told us to never sit in an open freight car with our legs hanging out the door because when the train hit the brakes, the door could slam shut and cut off our legs.  Good advice...

Earl

Wonderful thread. I am enjoying each and every one of these great personal stories.

I don't know what it is about coal cars, but here's another story.  Where we lived in the above story we moved from when I was between kindergarten and first grade over to the other side of Jackson, MI.  We lived the second house from the end of the street at the top of a hill.  Down that hill east was a Goodyear Tire plant with a railyard out back to its south.  We neighborhood kids would go down there and climb all over those "coal cars" and occasionally walk the top of the box cars.  I was astounded when one of the boys I was with jumped off the top of a boxcar into the coal, but we all tried it with success.  So, that wasn't enough, he jumped off the top of the boxcar all the way to the ground.  He said you won't get hurt if you cushion your fall with your knees.  I tried it and I still remember the feeling in my ankles as they stung and buzzed with numbness, but luckily didn't break.  We got better at jumping when we recalled how the paratoopers cushioned their landing by rolling over as they hit the ground.  At that time if we weren't at a Saturday matinee watching a cowboy movie it would be a WWII movie.

The war was still on at that time. The war effort needed metal so there was a drive on where you could get into the Saturday matinee free if you brought a bag full of squashed tin cans with you.  We children thought this was great and we would ride the bus downtown (5 cents) with a bag of cans in our lap.  There would be an army deuce and a half at the curb and "army guys" there to take our bag and toss it up into the truck.  At that time the children's admission price was 12 cents, so that meant we had enough money for a box of jujyfruits and a candy bar with two cents left over.

.....

Dennis

Thanks, Rich, for letting this continue. Another thing I remember was being in the Hoboken NJ station during a trip on a local train to NYC with my parents. There sat the "Phoebe Snow", the Lackawanna RR streamliner. While gaping at the engineer at the cab window, he asked if I'd like to come up. WOW! He let me turn on some kind of revolving headlight, which I could see reflected on the wall. It was 1952, and I was 10.

I am so happy to see this thread back in its pure form.  Great stories and memories.  I was born in  Philadelphia in 1947.  Both my Mom's and Dad's families lived in Martinsburg, West Virginia.  When we visited my Grandparents we always took the Pennsylvania Railroad from North Philly's old Broad Street Station to Washington D.C. where we changed trains to the Baltimore and Ohio which then took us into Martinsburg.  In the late 1940s and 1950s the motive power was almost always steam power.  As a little boy I absolutely loved Steam Locomotives.  I can remember standing at Martinsburg's train station and being literally awestruck by these massive engines.  I remember thinking that they looked and sounded like huge metal dragons which hissed steam while at rest and that the locomotives bright headlamp appeared to be a single eye piercing the early morning mist.  I always found the train rides to be a great adventure and always looked forward to them.  Some things like the smell of burned cinders and the sound of the engine' haunting whistle still stand out in my memory.  When the transition to diesel began to take place I was very disappointed.  When we arrived at the station I was always asking would it be steam or diesel and always suffered a let down when we were pulled by a diesel.  Even as a child  for me the diesels seemed to lack a personality.  

My dad died in 1953 from wounds received during WWll but we still took the train to Martinsburg until my mom learned how to drive in 1954.  The car rides were not nearly as much fun as the train rides.  Finally, we moved back to Martinsburg in 1959 and for me it was the greatest place to spend a childhood.  I led a Huckleberry Finn like existence and loved every bit of it.  I experienced virtually complete freedom.  No better time or place to grow up.

My father grew up in Monee Ill in an apartment right next to the Illinois Central tracks ( I believe they are CN now). Illinois Central  cut the railway down because of the incline through Monee and in some places the tracks are maybe 40 or 50 feet below the town. My dad said they lived on a second floor apartment and the soot would billow up and dirty my grandmas laundry hung on the balcony. He also remembers the trains stopping and they having to back up and tack the slack out to get going, his description of the sound from the steamers as they begun top move is great.Back then there were 4 tracks through Monee, now just one.

A few Chicago memories along that, "mighty fine Rock Island Line."

In 1969 I entered college at the Illinois Institute of Technology on Chicago's south side.

Now with the entire western edge of campus bordered by the elevated embankment of the 2 track Rock Island line into downtown Chicago, I figured some interesting railfanning was going to be had in addition to my regular studies. Well not so much, as I was kept very busy with school work with one fortuitous exception. My life drawing class was held in the old Main building, an old stone pile that was located hard against the tracks. Even better

the 3rd floor location of the classroom allowed a great view down onto the passing parade of equipment.

Now what could be better for a 17 year old young man? Several hours a week drawing nude models (perhaps not Playboy caliber, but female nonetheless), getting the catbird window seat most of the time and also having the home of my favorite Chicago White Sox in view just across the Dan Ryan Expressway.

During those years the Rock Island was rapidly slipping into insolvency, but it's dire straits in terms of motive power and passenger equipment were a visual bonanza for a railfan. Odd ball power such as the blunt faced, two of a kind AB6 EMD E units that had once powered the Colorado Springs section of the Rocket Mountain Rocket, splitting from the Denver section at Limon. The EMD repowered Alco DL-109 with the odd roof hump, nicknamed Christine, was an occasional visitor.  Center cab Alco C-415's on transfer runs. All in a bright to faded rainbow of color schemes: maroon and stainless, maroon and yellow, solid maroon, bright red and yellow, UP yellow and likely others I've forgotten. The passenger equipment was similarly diverse. Double deck gallery cars in fluted stainless steel as well as a bright red and yellow mod scheme. Smooth side single deckers in the red & yellow and drab green. Older single deck coaches in green, which I believe were nicknamed Al Capone cars, likely dating from Big Al's era. The short lived ROCK scheme in baby blue and white was then still a few years in the future. 

Did I ever take a camera up to my catbird seat? No, and I don't think the old, German instructor would have approved if I had. I certainly didn't want to risk having my parents getting a call from the dean. Heck, they didn't even know their son was spending some of his time drawing naked ladies!        

My all time favorite loco. I have Varney and Rivarossi versions of that engine. Both are detailed and weathered, and both have the full valve gear.

One more story about those good old days from my mother. Her family struggled during the depression, and often had to improvise and be creative to make ends meet. Collecting coal along the tracks was one way. Another was to eat "crackers and milk" as a breakfast cereal. Basically, it was crumbled soda crackers (Saltines) in milk. I've eaten crackers and milk many times since she told me about it, and it's not bad at all with a spoonful of sugar. Another staple back in the old days was fried bologna sandwiches. I liked those as well, but haven't had one in a dog's age.