One of my grandmothers lived near a busy single track Frisco main line which hosted 3 symbol freights plus another 3 to 5 additional scheduled freights. I later came to work on that same line. Another grandmother lived near the FW&D main line where I saw the Texas Zephyr, unnamed passenger trains 7 & 8, and scheduled freights pulled by those excellent SD7's roll by. Lastly, my father's business was beside the AT&SF main line between Lubbock, TX and division point Slaton, TX where I watched the California Special blaze by along with dozens of freight trains. It was difficult for anyone to keep my attention unless the subject dealt with railroads. (it still is !)
I was born in Bristol, England. First trip when I was about 4 with Mum and Sis from my local station, Clifton Down, past the bottom of our garden (OK, back-yard) to Severn Beach in either a railcar (Great Western Rly 'Flying Banana') or light Prairie tank (45xx Class) with 3 or 4 passenger cars.
By 1974 I had enough money saved to visit family in the USA and Canada by rail - NY, Montreal, Windsor/Detroit, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles (well Goofy must be a distant cousin my Mum said), New Orleans, Washington and back to NY. Still modelling the D&H in O....
Jason
My first memory of a train probably was my greatest. My father took me down to Union Station in our hometown of Bethlehem, PA. I was about 4 years old, so that would make it the Spring of 1951, and it was about the time of the Lehigh Valley Railroad's last gasp of steam. I remember standing next to my dad near the tracks and not far from the old Railway Express Agency Depot, now long gone. From the west came this STORM of a train, a huge Wyoming-type (4-8-4) loco with a 'beetle-brow' feedwater heater, probably class engine 5100 as few if any other LV locos had such a configuration. She was spouting tons of black smoke, roaring loudly, and sounding her deep-throated steamboat-type whistle, and I was petrifiedly (a new word) enraptured. I am pretty certain that I held my dad's strong hand through the whole event, and it is a wonderful memory I will always cherish!
In 1963 or 64 we lived in California and my grandparents lived near Cleveland Oh. My mom and 4 kids rode the Super Chief train from Cali to either Cleveland or maybe Chicago since it seems that GP picked us up and we drove a long way in a car to get to his house. I remember the train going around a curve and I could see the locomotives that were pulling way out front. That picture is in my mind just like yesterday! My N scale layout has that AA Santa Fe set up with the aluminum cars and someday my O scale will have the train that got me hooked also!
Several lifetimes ago, we lived two blocks off the EL on White Plains Rd in the (da) Bronx. Always had the sound of the trains running, but my earliest memory of riding was when my Dad took me to his job when he worked for U.S. Lines. He had a brother that worked for the NY transit system but I have no personal memory of that, other than his son, my cousin, had a really cool model train setup.
I’m like Steve........the Bronx, mid 50’s........one of my earliest memories is watching the number 6 EL train around Middletown Rd &Westchester Ave.
Peter
When I was 4 years old during a visit to my aunt and uncle in Steubenville, Ohio, I found “My First Love”. They lived on the second floor of a three story apartment. In the back, all three apartments had a screened in porch with a shared set of stairs to the back yard. At the end of the back yard was a small stone wall about 3 feet high. Beyond the wall was the double track Pennsylvania RailRoad mainline. During this visit, I heard a train whistle and shot out the back door, down the stairs and ran to the wall. My mom was yelling at my Dad to get me. I stopped at the wall and my dad finally caught up to me and made sure I stayed put. The whistle and chuffing exhaust kept getting closer. It was an east bound train, so it would be on the track closest to the wall. An enormous Pennsylvania Railroad steam locomotive came into view going fairly slow through town. As the locomotive was passing by, the engineer waved at me and blew the whistle. The sound was deafening and the smell of burning coal and steam filled the air. It was about 8 feet away from me and what a sight! I fell in love with trains that day.
At the age of 2, I rode the LIRR from Jamaica(?) to the end of the line at Greenport behind #39. I don't remember the trip, but something stuck in my developing brain, and I have been a train guy ever since.
My paternal GF was a towerman on the B&O, my Paternal GGF was a brakeman on the B&O, who lost a leg in a work accident, and was given the job, late in life, as a crossing gate guard. My maternal GF was a civil engineer, working for several large steam-fitting companies (Babcock & Wilcox stands out in my memory). After WW2, he commuted to Shelter Island ("one station further than Greenport") every Friday night from NYC and back on Sunday night, taking the "Daddy Train" and I would often meet him. I was fascinated by the C-Liner locomotives with their odd (to me) two-axle front truck and 3-axle rear truck. I watched them turn those Diesels on the turntable. The turntable's rotator motor was powered by compressed air from the locomotive.
The first train ride that I can remember was a round trip from Braddock Pa. to Connellsville Pa. My Grandfather had a sister in Connellsville and each year he and my Grandmother and one of the grandkids would take the B&O train for an overnight visit. I might have been 9 or 10. My Grandfather's brother-in-law would pick us up at the station.
The locomotive was a diesel cab body. I think I made two visits, I cannot remember. My grandfather's brother-in-law was a real tinkerer. He had sheds filled with interesting mechanical and electrical stuff. He had a big metal lathe in the cellar and some facility to make castings (probably aluminum). On one trip, I came home with a lineman's generator set - Oak box with leather strap, and some kind of low voltage flasher device. I still have the generator set. The leather strap is long gone but if you turn the crank and connect the leads, the bell rings. I don't remember much about the railroad coaches or scenery, but I still remember the sheds full of stuff.
@paigetrain posted:I wanna say i was five and the i saw a brocshure for the Tweetsie railroad which at the time i knew very little about trains and thought that they were all like the echo classic rail that i had at the time or that little christmas train i had at mom's place with you know big diamond stack toy like Disney style. (i was little and didn't know any better) I thought Tweetsie looked like my toy train. Fast forward i'm about ten and i finally ride the Tweetsie by the grace of God because my dad decided to pull back the NO TRAINS rule and let me ride the train which was enjoyable except for when i was scolded for wanting to continuously watch the side rods of the engine instead of the scenery or watch the boarding process with the train pulling in instead of eating my lunch. drove my dad nuts no wonder we never went back. so the tweetsie or the East Tennessee and Western North Carolina will always be somewhat special to me as i rode behind one of her engines. hopefully one day i will ride that train again.
what was the first train you ever rode ? feel free to share your experiences or comment on mine.
I was 14 and took a ride in a Pennsylvania GG1, at this time I decided i would work for them, fast forward and I was running motors for the PennCentral. A great job, while I loved the G's the E-44's had the most pulling power. But in the end there is nothing like notching out a G with 15 SS cars in tow on the Corridor. My friend took the photo of me pulling out of DC with a full load. He sells them on E bay with other PC photos.
BTW its a scale GG-1.......LOL
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Frisco, from Memphis to Springfield, MO. Later about 1 year rode the Texas Special out of Springfield. Around 1949.
My first vivid experience with a train was when I was almost 3 years old. My family was out on a Sunday drive and we came across three B&O steam locomotives coupled together. These three locomotives were providing temporary heating for, the then, new NSA building near Fort George Meade in Maryland. We stopped the car and my dad took me over to view the three large steaming beasts when the fireman asked my dad to bring me aboard. So I was hoisted upward into the cab of one of these behemoths. I remember the fireman showing us the controls within the cab. He opened the door to the firebox and immediately I became a rail fan! I couldn't get enough of trains from that day on.
My second experience with a real train was when I was 3 years old. My family took a trip to visit friends in Cliffside NJ. We took a B&O passenger train from Camden Station in Baltimore. We arrived at Camden Station way ahead of departure time. While waiting, my dad took me out to the platforms of the stub end tracks. In those days Camden Station had six stub end tracks on the upper level and two run through tracks exiting the Howard Street tunnel on the lower level. The station switcher, a B&O SW1, was idling on one of the tracks as it awaited its' next move. The engineer invited my dad and me aboard! Once aboard the engineer picked me up and sat me in his lap and put my tiny hand on the throttle, and with his hand also on the throttle the engine began to move forward. We actually switched some passenger cars to another track that morning! Now that was way cool!!!! This experience definitely hooked me on trains ... LOL!!
Our train arrived and we boarded the coach. Upon my first glance at the interior of the coach I immediately exclaimed " This is not a train this is a room!" ... I couldn't understand why the interior of the coach did not look like the interior of a locomotive cab. LOL!!! Up until that time my only experiences with a real train were inside locomotive cabs, both steam and diesel.
Later that same year, I received a Lionel electric train, with a 2065 steam locomotive, for Christmas. The 2065 still runs great to this day, as does the entire set!
Disney World ‘94 - those are apparently legit narrow gauge Baldwin built beasts, so I’ll take it! Could have been a john deer tractor in a streamlined shroud so long as that steam whistle checks out.
our kindergarten class rode a caboose about 12 miles to the next town. Took a greyhound bus back.
My first experience on a real train of which I was old enough to remember was on a PRR train ride with my maternal grandfather, William Schubert, a retired PRR freight conductor with 42 years of PRR service. Though I was told that I had ridden with my grandfather once before when I was small enough to be handed by my mother to my grandfather at Penn Station, Baltimore, Maryland, through the window of our family car, that trip does not count. I remember going down the the station platform well before the arrival of our train so I could see other trains, pulled by GG-1 and P-5A modified electric locomotives come and go. It was a life-changing experience that hooked me on the Pennsylvania Railroad for a life-time. Over the years, my grandfather and I took trips to Harrisburg, New York, Philadelphia and Washington and I got to see the Pennsylvania Railroad through his eyes and explanations. I vividly remember taking a local trip to the Orangeville roundhouse in East Baltimore. He lifted me to the rear platform of a cabin car (the PRR did not have cabooses) that was on a siding and climbed aboard behind me. He then lifted me high enough to press what looked like a door-bell button. This resulted in a shrill whistling sound and attracted several loud, male voices using language that was not appropriate for me at my age. After they came around the back of the cabin car. they looked up and said, 'Bill Shubert!!! what are you doing here? It is great to see you again.' I treasure the memories of those years spent with my grandfather.
I just noticed that Randy's Great Northeastern Railway logo has a cat on it instead of the Great Northern goat.
Randy, your personal record has been awarded ten merits for creativity in logo design.
This is generational. I am 71 and lived outside New York, so who knows? I was far too young to remember. Trains were just part of life. It would be like me asking you what was the first car you saw? (other than your parents'). Τhe question shows how things have changed. I don't mean that a criticism in any way, just an observation. I'll see if I can conjure up my first real train memory, though.
Actually I cannot remember a time before seeing a real train! As I have stated here before my hometown back in the day was only second to Pittsburgh install production. We were served by five-class1 railroads, the Pennsy, NYC, B&O, Erie and P&LE "The Little Giant." Plus another 10 or 12 Subs.
May of 1946 came from St Elizabeth Hospital to my first home, the first house on Erie St. north of Midlothian Blvd. Two blocks west on Midlothian were the Youngstown and Southern (Y&S) railroad tracks at Southern Blvd. to cross over. Just before the tracks was my barber, just past the grocers then my mom's dress shop. Just over the tracks on left was Handles SOHIO gas station were in 1945 Mary Handel founded "Handel's Ice Cream." So to go without saying we were stop at the crossing many of times. Can recall many of times seeing steam pull trains north and south by what I now knew were Mikes.
Then on the east on town was the Center Street Bridge that was over 10 or 12 tracks of those 5-class-1's plus some service RRs. Looking east from the bridge you saw the eight Republic Steel's Haselton Furnaces (Blast). Saw steam in the late 40's early 50's to diesel to the later 70's.
Then there were the two track Erie crossing on East Federal St. Really being caught there by many of Steam the Diesel tears.
So from a little after birth until in my Thirties trains were in my eyeballs and nostril and Blood.
Then add to this the fact Dad was from Conway, Pa. And we visited family there into Pittsburgh at leas once every other month.
Ron
I grew up in and around Wayne, IL, in the middle of a polygon created by the IC's Iowa Division on the north, the CNW Belvidere Sub on the west, the CA&E and EJ&E on the east and the CGW on the south. The CA&E (The 'Roarin' Elgin) ran through the fields behind our place in town, therefore, my first train was a third rail interurban racing through the corn stalks. A Lionel trainset, at age 4, with its 3rd rail helped to set the tone for my career. After my first railroad job on the CNW and the service, I wound up working for a 3rd rail line sandwiched between stints on a short line that used the ICC's Electric Railway System of Accounts. It's a long and winding branch...
Near the end of his 50 years on the B&O, my grandfather worked at Camden Station. We would visit and take him cookies which usually resulted in a cab ride and roaming about the yards. First real throttle time and not posing for a picture was an old B&OCTRR SW-1 switching a chemical plant with a friendly crew that answered a thousand questions.
On the Southside of Chicago, trains were everywhere. The GTW freights blew through about a block and a half away and were visible from our front porch. The B&OCT ran about another six blocks to the East and was a dreaded traffic impediment. A daily ritual involved my mother loading the kids in the car to pick up my dad at the Rock Island commuter stop on 103rd Street.
My first train ride was on the Rock Island with my mom to visit Marshall Field’s in the Loop at Christmas. I was probably four. Magic.
First ride was NH special run to the Bronx Zoo. The Bridgeport Station was very old and majestic, can still remember walking up the ramps and smelling the creosote. Probably between 59 & 61.
After that as I have shared before, about 2 miles west of the station is a softball field, in the late 50's early 60's (4 elevated tracks on a solid wall) I would count the cars on the NH freight trains as I was watching the games.
Back in 1957, when I was 10 years old, my mother and I rode the Empire Builder from Seattle to Chicago. We spent the summer there and then rode back on the train again. That was all it took to get me hooked. Also, my dad worked at Booth Fisheries in Seattle. A couple of times, he took me to work with him. I still have a soft spot for the little switch engines that spotted the reefers at the plant for loading.
My first exposure to a real train that I specifically remember as a very special, awe-inspiring event was the 1953 train wreck in Washington DC Union Station when the Federal lost its brakes, crashed through the barrier, and the GG1 fell through the concourse into the basement. At some point they allowed people to come to Union Station and view the wrecked locomotive and my father took me to see it. I was 6 at the time and I was completely blown away by the sight of such a huge, massive, tangle of metal.
@BZ posted:My first exposure to a real train that I specifically remember as a very special, awe-inspiring event was the 1953 train wreck in Washington DC Union Station when the Federal lost its brakes, crashed through the barrier, and the GG1 fell through the concourse into the basement. At some point they allowed people to come to Union Station and view the wrecked locomotive and my father took me to see it. I was 6 at the time and I was completely blown away by the sight of such a huge, massive, tangle of metal.
You WIN!
Rusty
Riding the DRG&W narrow gauge in 1960 on vacation in Colorado. Got to pull the chains from the drivers from a K27 or K36, don't remember, and climb into the cab in Durango. I remember in Silverton when the 2nd train arrived it slid about 6 feet after the brakes were applied to stop. I thought, how cool is that !
Trumptrain,
Your story reminded me of the time my late father-in-law took my son and daughter to see where he worked, the BN railroad. He let them both run a locomotive briefly. He reported that my son was ever so careful with the throttle, but with my daughter it was either dead stop or full speed ahead. I am still a bit jealous that I didn't get to be there.
Probably my first encounter was waiting for a local GTW SW-2 switcher move to clear a grade crossing while en route with one or more parents to a store, or the GTW yard-ferry dock transfer, in Muskegon, MI, in the 1950s. My first ride on a train was the Muskegon-Holland connection on the C&O (a Geep and 2-3 heavyweight cars) on my 8th birthday. Chased many local switching jobs and ferry transfers around on my bike, in my youth - GTW, C&O, and Pennsy. It was a rare and real treat to see road power taking a train into or out from town.
I went to my first Yankee game at age six in '56 on the D-train, complete with open ceiling fans, pinching rattan seats, and that unmistakable smell. Back then the D-train had a 'smell,' not an odor. Just $.15 a ride.
I remember my father returning from a business trip in Washington D.C. into Metuchen NJ. I remember the GG1 ominously leaning towards the station, sometime in the late 70's(?) I recognized it from the Lionel GG1 my uncle had as a kid, which I am now in the possession of.
It probably would've been the Black River & Western or the Whippany River, both in NJ.
At 5, I took a ride on the "Mississippian" at Amory, Mississippi. The Carlisle family were the operations crew for that shortline operation and they also operated a trailer park where we were living. My dad was a surveyer for the Frisco at that time, 1954. Brothers Frank and James were the engineer, brakeman and conductor and they had two ex-Frisco steamers. Look for them on the net, both still exist, one is still operated up in Canada and the other (poor thing) is a display piece repainted for the B&O.
I live about a half mile from the csx mainline. When I was a little kid my dad would take me for walks next to the tracks. Unfortunately, csx has decided to fence in the area now, which means no one else will get to experience this.
Csxcellent,
Your story somehow reminded me of my childhood in Seattle. Some of us would spend an entire Saturday, just walking and exploring. One day we ended up at a railroad track. We could see and hear a train approaching, so we put some pennies on the track for the train wheels to squish. It worked pretty well. The pennies we were able to find afterward were truly squashed flat. Then one of the kids started yelling that we could have derailed the train. Hey, I was only in the third grade...I didn't know any better. I got the heck out of there and never said a word to anybody.
@Papa Dave posted:Csxcellent,
Your story somehow reminded me of my childhood in Seattle. Some of us would spend an entire Saturday, just walking and exploring. One day we ended up at a railroad track. We could see and hear a train approaching, so we put some pennies on the track for the train wheels to squish. It worked pretty well. The pennies we were able to find afterward were truly squashed flat. Then one of the kids started yelling that we could have derailed the train. Hey, I was only in the third grade...I didn't know any better. I got the heck out of there and never said a word to anybody.
I did the same thing. I also kept a few spikes left behind after they fixed the tracks. Feeling the wind caused by a speeding freight train and the sounds that come with it are quite an experience. I even got to see a few conrail engines that weren’t yet repainted in csx colors. Too bad the railroads are so strict today in regards to trespassing and fences. I’m guessing they are covering their rear for lawsuits.
I was first exposed to ttains in a tiny tank town on the Southern, where we lived in a former store (harness shop) owned by an aunt and uncle. It was on depot lane, and my brother and l hung out at the station and under the water tower. There was a siding there that served coal hoppers for the country store. My dad was a fireman on the Southern and his buddy, a brakeman, was working one freight switching hoppers when he took me up to the caboose platform and let me ride around during the switching moves. I didn't get to ride a passenger train until D&RGW narrow gauge to Silverton in 1957.
Grew up in bayonne nj, half block from the CNJ 4 track main line. Would sit at 8th street station and watch the show. Almost got into a cab of what might have been a rs3 when my father took me to communipaw when i was 4 or 5, figure 1959. Train was pulling out in a minute so out of luck. Never saw steam but until the aldene plan kicked in the parade of trains was great.
ACL "West Coast Champion" from North Broad St station to Orlando. I have memories of the aroma of the ACL diner car's deep fried french toast. 
