When did I first start to have a fascination with trains?

When I was just a little kid, dad and I went over to Lawrence to watch 1073 be shoved into the park in Lawrence, but I don't remember any of it, just what he told me. He had a friend who was a section foreman, and they told him about laying track into the park. But I started to become interested when I stood up in my crib, looked out the window, and watched a Santa Fe steam engine go through Pauline.

It never "started" with me; it's just always been there.

Before I-10 was built west of Houston, I would look for trains on the MKT to Sealy, mabe get to see ATSF under the bridge there, and SP from Columbus to Schulenburg along US 90.  It was the end of the Black widow livery and the F-units.  Being 5 to 7 years old, I would call the F units "curved nose"!

Also, there was Chaney Jct. on the SP behind the plant where my  Father worked.  There was a small yard, where several jobs working on the west side of Houston came on/off duty.

For Christmas my 6th year, my parents took me to Sears, and asked what train set I wanted.  I wanted the one with a SP engine and caboose.  Only one set fit the bill:  MARX.  Over and under set with that great smelling Marx smoke....

Lastly when I was 7, my Mother and I rode the SUNSET Houston to Schulenburg, Father driving up with the car.......

Wonder why I prefer "The Friendly".........?

My fascination with trains began around 1955. My dad had an "S" scale layout that he set up every Christmas. It was the period of time when mainline tracks still paralleled highways in many places and we traveled a lot. Seeing the real things, especially at night with there booming headlights, was memorizing. My fascination with model trains didn't start until 2010 when I retired and actually had time + space + money to do this thing!!!

Love your pics!!

I'm not sure. My mother told me that from age 2, I only wanted "The Little Engine That Could" read to me. My mother, and her parents, bought me "train Stuff" (wooden, then wind-up MARX). When my father got home from WWII, in 1945, I got a set of Lionel for Christmas in '46. When we went to visit my father's parents in Hollis, Long Island, I would spend hours watching trains from the Hollis station platform. The tracks nearest the platforms were for the local non-steam trains. The middle 2 rails were for steam passenger express trains, and once in a while, freight  trains. These were the last years of steam. I would wave to the cab, and the fireman or engineer would always wave back. As a kid, I was more interested in real trains than the toy versions.

Today, at age 75, I'm very lucky to have these memories. About 2 years ago I got a large B&W photo on eBay of a LIRR steam passenger train as it approached the Hollis station platform...the very one I stood on. The photo is hand dated 1948 on the back, which was the year I first started watching at age 6. Two days ago I found another photo of the platforms and station, but with no train in sight. It will take a while to get it since the seller lives in Australia.

I was 4 years old and a PRR Steam engine going through Steubenville Ohio eastbound  and it was so big so loud and smelled like nothing I had ever smelled.  It was love at first sight!

smd4 posted:

It never "started" with me; it's just always been there.

same as me

For me, my parents took me and my siblings to Virginia to visit my aunt by Amtrak. I was a baby and have no memories of it but a picture in my mother's photo album. I am assuming that memory of my train ride has been tucked away in my mind ever since because as far back as I can remember, I've always had a fascination with trains.

The cards my mother bought to announce my birth featured a baby boy...in the cab of a whimsical blue steam locomotive.

Mine also started with real trains. From my infancy till young grade school age, I traveled on a single-car branch train behind steam, then diesel, so I got a close-up dose of the sights and sounds. The branch closed in the mid-60s and we had to travel by bus. I hated it; still hate bus travel.

I always had a clockwork set, but few years later I discovered scale model trains and have been dabbling in them ever since. My whole 3-rail interest is a recent phenomenon; maybe an attraction to clicking, buzzing and sparking. 

Dec. 1979, when I first saw NKP 765. In addition, playing with some Lionel trains for the first time around the Christmas tree a few weeks later.  

My parents said I would crawl or toddle around a room lining up small objects, and calling it "my train".  And it just kept going.....

Rob Leese posted:

My parents said I would crawl or toddle around a room lining up small objects, and calling it "my train".  And it just kept going.....

i did that with my hot wheels cars

When I was two or three, we drove our brand new 51 Ford woody from Minneapolis to Southern California and brought Grandma home on "the streamliner" as my parents called it in 1951 or 52.  Dad drove home alone and promptly traded the car in on a new 52 Rambler.

As a memento of that trip, the one aunt that always gave me the coolest stuff brought me what  I learned 50 years later was a Strombecker HO size Union Pacific streamlined train.

The only parts I remember, are the yellow and grey color, the wooden wheels, and the hook&eye couplers. A train made of wood and paper didn't survive a three year old's constant attention.

Whenever mom and I went shopping, if I was a good boy in the stroller (of course I always was) I could get a penny or nickle toy that I could pick out for myself. It was usually some kind of a train. When I found some of those at a train meet years ago, I told the seller I was 5 years old again.

So, basically, as long as I can remember.

On my maternal grandfather's shoulder watching the EL trains coming and going from this station, circa 55-56.....

Middletown Rd.....on the IRT 6.

Peter

My earliest train experience, that l can remember, was my dad doing a chalk drawing of the Southern Mikado he fired, on my child's blackboard easel, when I was 3-4.

1938, when visiting my grandparent's farm, my dad would take up to the D&H tunnel, top of the Belden Hill.

I can only "document" to 1948!

Since birth I think...definitely genetic.

My dad built me my first HO layout when I was 8 in (19@#&. Before that it was his Pre-war Lionel's under the tree each year. Always stopped to watch the LIRR pass by. Saw mostly Alcos, GP-38's and other diesels and then unfortunately the move to electric.

In 1955 when I was in first grade, I received a Lionel train set from my dad for Christmas also for the Model Railroader buffs always was fascinated at the HO layouts in this magazine in the mid-1950's.  Also as kids we had the life size Lionel trains very close to our family homes, the life size Lionel trains were the EJ&E, NYC, Milwaukee Road and C&EI.

First Lionel set 3 years old at Christmas.  Probably my father wanted, because I don't remember asking Santa for it.

Later in life after watching Risky Business, I really became involved with trains as an adult.

For the first years of my life, this was basically the view from my bedroom window in Astoria, Queens - the approach to the Hellgate Bridge. I'd count boxcars with my father at 2 years old.

That and a Lionel Scout set also around the age of 2 probably sealed the deal for me! 

Jim

#Risky Business... Hmm I need to re-watch that one I guess. I have enjoyed the running/crashing/creating/fixing of my fathers train at a young age, but my "FASCINATION" Began when I met you blokes, here, and was shown the "Rabbit Hole" by my mentor "ELLIOT".....

yes, I can blame Elliot.. I never, never, ever had the concept of how dynamic and robust this could become.  Something for everyone is mildly understated.

P.s. thank you Elliot

Jim Policastro posted:

For the first years of my life, this was basically the view from my bedroom window in Astoria, Queens - the approach to the Hellgate Bridge. I'd count boxcars with my father at 2 years old.

That and a Lionel Scout set also around the age of 2 probably sealed the deal for me! 

Jim

I love looking at this area during one of our many trips over the HellGate bridge (Phila to Boston). I remark to my wife, "we are going past the neighborhoods". I'd love to see them at night, lit up for Christmas (I assume they are?). I was born in, and lived for a while, in Ridgewood, Queens (1942-49).

I have been obsessed with trains since before I was talking according to my mother.  Being adopted, they had no idea where it stemmed from.  Wasn't till well into adulthood we learned it was from autism spectrum disorder.  I will have to scan some of the old pictures of me as a kid with my trains in and post them tomorrow.    Mike

I probably had no choice. My dad was a lifelong model railroader, had an operating layout in the basement of the apartment building we lived in when I was born. First train, a 1962 Lionel set with 2365 C&O diesel when I was about 5 (just bought one recently - 'hot rodded it' with a fuel tank loaded with lead and operating couplers). Then HO, then back to Lionel, Standard Gauge, G, still at it. We lived outside of New Brunswick, me and a buddy would ride bikes down the carry them up to the platform on the westbound side and watch trains all day. At 11, would take a suitcase on the train to NYC and deliver to Macy's, then run about the city. I remember going in the cab of a GG1 down at the train level in Penn Station and getting to pull the cord on the horn, almost fell out of the cab it was so loud, echoing throughout the station.