the first real train you were ever exposed to

One of my first memories of any kind: what I now know was the Mingo Junction (OH) steel mill yard goat coming down the Pennsylvania river line to help a stuck coal train out of the siding at the NACCO #1 coal loadout. I was on Pop’s shoulders and he said several times “Look at that, sis!” while Mom and Dad said “Remember.”

ETA: Pennsylvania was fully dieselized by that time and all the adults knew that might be the last steam engine they’d see on the line. My sisters confirm that it did happen, but they were unimpressed. I was not. Diesels rumbled in a satisfactory way, but this engine—I don’t know which one of several it could have been—breathed and snorted as she ran down to the far end of the stalled train.
Pop, I did look. Mom and Dad, I do remember.

Growing up, I lived near the village of Convoy, Ohio.  The PRR Ft. Wayne Line bisected the town and passed about 1/2 mile behind our house.  I would often watch trains pass in the distance.  I especially remember the focal orange cabin cars.

When I was about three years old, my babysitter lived several doors from tracks in town.  There was a grain elevator just down the street that had rail service.  One warm summer morning, she walked me down to the elevator as they were switching cars. As I rounded the corner of the grain bin I was face to face with a huge, green GP9.  It must have been 30 feet tall! The ground was shaking.  I didn't know weather to be scared or just stand there in awe.  We watched the crew go about their business for a little while then walked back to the house.  From then on, every time I heard the horns I wanted to go watch the trains at the elevator.  I think I drove her nuts with all my questions and pleas to go watch the trains.

Tom

I actually have two answers for this only because of old family photos.  I have a photo from when I was about 2 posed with my family in front of the PRR American Standard that used to be the main steam locomotive for the Strasburg Railroad.  This would have been 1972?  The locomotive now lives in the museum across the street.

The memory that I have actual recollections of without the benefit of photographs is riding the Southern Crescent around 1974 when it was still operated by the Southern.  My memories include the sleeper berth where my brother and I had to share the upper bunk, riding in the dome car, and how nice the porters were to everyone. 

Speaking of three year-olds, last summer our three year-old granddaughter was visiting when we heard a train coming into town.  I yelled for our daughter to grab Noelle and put her in her car seat.  I got my wife and we all headed for the tracks.  Unfortunately, the train was going too fast and had already passed the crossing down the street from our house.  We decided to head west out of town to "Head it off at the pass" so to speak.  We pulled off on a side road and stopped about 100 feet from the tracks.  Just as I was getting Noelle out of her car seat the train appeared from behind a wooded area.  She was screaming with excitement.  She pointed out the various cars such as hoppers, tank cars and boxcars.  After the train passed I went to put her back in the car.  She threw a fit because she wanted to wait until it came back around again.  I guess she has spent too much time watching Papa Choo Choo's trains

Tom

From age 2 to age 7, I lived in Pittsburgh, PA, and my grandfather, who worked for the PRR in Columbus, OH, made numerous uses of his pass to visit us on weekends.  Sunday morning, we would drive him to the station (still in existence), drop him off at the door, and then go park on a bridge that spanned the west-bound departure tracks.  Soon enough, a passenger train lead by some huge steam engine, would depart the station and we all waved goodbye.

As I look back now, I realize that most likely those were not his trains because we never would have dropped him off that close to departure time.  But I will always remember the thrill of the sounds, smoke and steam as those engines passed under that bridge.

Chuck

Growing up in the Calumet Region of Indiana and Illinois it was hard to drive fifteen minutes without seeing (and waiting) for a train.  Downtown Hammond, Indiana had diagonal tracks for the Monon, Erie and South Shore.  North Hammond had main line NYC and PRR.  An aunt and uncle's home was four blocks from Whiting Beach, but we had to cross the main line for the PRR and NYC and possibly the B&O.  Attended the 1948 Chicago Railroad Exposition.  Among other displays, Timken had a boxcar on a level track.  With the roller bearings, two kids could push it.  John

Rode the Santa Fe Chicago to L.A. to go to an American Legion convention with my parents.  We were in the first car (a sleeper) behind the locomotives out of Chicago.  Through the car end door window, I could see the nose of the trailing unit.  I was fascinated watching the nose bob around as we were in motion.  I went to the car end multiple times, even got up several times during the night just to watch.

I was disappointed in the morning to find out other cars were added in Kansas City and my view was now of the corridor of the adjoining car.  (The second disappointment was coming back to kindergarten and finding out the slide was removed from the classroom in my absence...)

Still, it was fun having the "run of the train," especially moving from car to car through the diaphragms or simply standing in a vestibule taking in the experience.

Rusty

The first time I rode the San Juaquin Daylight with my mother and brother from Fresno to LA, I was too young to remember it.  We did this for several years and there is a picture somewhere of my brother and I in front of the steam engine when I was older.

My brother enjoyed watching the trains, so when I was old enough he and I would bike over to the SP tracks one day, then the UP tracks the next.  I do remember being way too close to those engines when they past by, and especially when riding our bikes along side them.

I grew up in Toledo Oh. Trains ran everywhere. So I have no idea when I saw my first train.

My Dad had a friend who was a clerk at the Indiana Harbor Belt and he got us a ride on an IHB switcher and I remember blowing the horn.. Pretty cool for a 4 year old kid

My grandfather took me on my first train ride when I was 5 years old on Union Pacific's Yellowstone Express in eastern Idaho back in the mid-1950s. That's when I fell in love with trains. I have an N scale model of it in my man cave. It was a heavyweight baggage car and 3 heavyweight coaches pulled by an old UP 4-6-2 light Pacific. The train was discontinued in 1956 and the Pacifics the UP used on the Yellowstone Branch were replaced by EMD GP7s for freight duty.

Often my mother would hang up the phone and announce “we're going to pick up Daddy, hurry up, get in the car” almost too much excitement for a four-year-old.

The 57' Roadmaster would come alive; my mother a small woman at the helm as we rocketed along in the Buick through the streets of Cleveland's Eastside, my small self, standing on the front seat as we bounced along, I knew the way.

Arriving at the NYCRR Colinwood Yard in East Cleveland. We would park below one of the towers. Never again in my life would I witness so much live railroad action, the year was 1957, I watched intently out the windshield sometimes when I would wear mom down, she would get us an invite up into the tower, My father worked for the New York Central in management and I remember how everyone who worked for the railroad always seemed like family.

Soon enough the tell-tale roar of the approaching EMD's. Most often lesser trains but every now and then; the 20^th Century, there in the middle of the night. Bathed in the overhead floods, you could feel the weight as the train glided past soon coming to a stop. An almost magical set of stairs would appear. Daddy was home from another trip.

I never stopped wanting to get on that train, I doubt I knew where it was going.

I recall a Pacific Electric interurban car at Seal Beach, California, in 1948, but the first "steam road" train was a real gem:   Santa Fe's streamlined 4-6-4 3460 ("The Blue Goose") scorching the ballast at 100 MPH on the eastbound Grand Canyon at La Mirada, in 1949.  The 3460 made just one trip west of La Junta, in 1949, and I was fortunate enough to see it heading back home to the ATSF Eastern Lines.

I'm pretty sure my first experiences with real trains that I can remember are Disneyland (does that count?), the train museum in Campo, California (near San Diego) and also Cajon Pass in the mid 1990s (the early BNSF era). I have a picture of me (no idea how old I was) standing in front of the Barstow Yard Tower.

I grew up in San Francisco so, if you don't count the municipal railway (streetcars) which were daily use items, my first "real" train experience would've been in the early/mid Sixties.  Living in the City, we had to take a bus to the terminal in Oakland where we caught the train to Stockton, CA to visit my Uncle who lived in Linden.  I believe we also took the train back but my memory of the return trip isn't as clear.  It wasn't an overnight trip and most of the trip was through agricultural land.  A lot of the land around Stockton and Linden was nut orchards - walnuts and almonds.  At the time, my Mother told us the train was the California Zephyr.  I do remember that the cars were shiny steel cars but Mom was known to make up facts to suit the story.  I don't know if that was the actual route of the Zephyr at the time.

The next "real" train would've been behind one of the steamers at Disneyland after my first airplane trip.  Later, my Dad took us on camping trips several times that included a ride on the Skunk Train in Fort Bragg, CA.

I tell the story in my Amtrak video but here's the Cliffs Notes version:
My dad had ordered a new car in Seattle and we lived in Eastern Washington.  As a surprise on my 9th birthday my dad and I boarded the Empire Builder and travelled over Stampede Pass to Seattle on Amtrak.  That's the first time I recall being on a real train if you don't count the Seattle or Disney Monorails or the SeaTac Airport subway.  We had a great day riding the rails and then after we picked up the car we drove about 2 hours back home where we had dinner and birthday cake.  I then received my Amtrak Lake Shore Limited as my birthday present. About a week ago I had the chance to tour an Amtrak dining car at the NP Railway Museum.  It reminded me of this trip because I remember ordering and eating breakfast in a very similar dining car.

From 1 year of age to about 9 (1941-1950 we lived half a block from the Patchogue station of the LIRR. Steam commuter trains and freight was routine back then. Took the train to NYP to change to the New Haven to visit my relatives in Stamford CT. Remember being disappointed when once taking the trip to have a G-5 and not one of the new diesels just arriving. My father took me on a round trip to Babylon on the RDCs when they were moved to the Babylon Scoot. Great memories.

Thats Hard to pin down, My Father took me , to ride the Milwaukee Electric Trolley the last day of service .  I remember the North Shore Street running out of Down town! The Hiawatha coming into the old depot, down town.  The 400 coming To the big CNW station by the lake front!,  And Wisconsin Electric delivering coal hopper's with steeple cabs, to one of their power houses.  The roads were brick  and most of the Busses I road rand off of over head wires

my first real train ride was when i was about 6 yrs old on the s.i. rapid transit. mom and dad took me and my brother to see the ringling brothers circus at madison square garden in 1965. not only did we get to ride the SIRT, we took the ferry boat and then NYC subway. all in all a great day!

Shaker Heights Rapid Transit at age 3 in 1965.  I vividly recall seeing the yellow PCCs going past the basement windows of the department store.   

We moved back to Philly in 1967, and I recall being disappointed because you could hear the subway in Lits, Strawbridge and Clothier, Gimbels and Wanamakers' basements but you couldn't see them... 

Mitch

Dad would load me in the car on Sunday afternoons and after a stop at the Royal Dairy for chocolate milkshakes, we’d head to the PRR station in Lewistown, PA to watch trains. PRR was still running M1 4-8-2’s on some freight trains across the Middle Division in the mid 50’s but, what we really hoped to see was a diesel! I know; incomprehensible from the perspective of 2022…🤔

Curt

The first train I ever road was the NYC subway. I grew up in Brooklyn, NY and my Dad worked in Manhatten for Ma Bell. Every year on Christmas Eve morning they had a Christmas party at his job and my parents took my sister and I to the city via the New York City subway (which was elevated where we got in Brooklyn. I loved riding on the subway as it was closest thing to a real passenger train like you saw in the movies but what I really wanted to see was freight trains because all my Lionel postwar trains were freight.

The first freight train I saw was a very small locomotive pulling a gondola through the streets of Brooklyn on McDonald Ave. I think I was about 6 or 7 so that is approximately '71 or '72. Those rails are long gone now. The second time I saw a freight train was when I was about 10 years old. I saw a freight train while we were on a family vacation. It was all black and it appeared to be a "F" unit. I saw no markings on it so I have always assumed it was a Penn Central. When I was 13 and a half we moved to BJ where I saw freight trains every day pulled by Conrail GP9s or GP38-2s. The next passenger train I would ride would be NJ transit into Manhatten. It's on my bucket list to go on a long trip via Amtrak.

The day my mom and dad brought me home from the hospital, Illinois Central rumbling by about 300 feet from our house. Broadview, Illinois.

This one is a little different...

Circa 1960-61. Took a B&O RDC from Washington Union Station to Baltimore and then on to a visit to the B&O Rail Road Museum.

I still remember being confused about "where the engine was."

B&O from Union Station (or Silver Spring, MD) to Chicago on our way to visit Mom's family in Wisconsin.

My earliest recollection is the overnight ride in a heavyweight Pullman and being awakened as we rolled through the Pittsburgh steel-making area to witness the glowing furnaces, ingots, slag piles, lights, activity, etc.,etc. in the wee hours around midnight. 

On a smaller scale, my earliest recollection of toy trains was Dad's 366W set racing around the balsam Christmas tree, keeping the gateman buzzing out of his cozy shed every lap.

(sigh)

Looking out my bedroom window in Astoria, Queens watching trains on the approach to the Hellgate Bridge. I could count boxcars in a train to over 100 with my father's help at the age of two. The beginnings of a very educational hobby for me!

Jim

The first train that I remember was in 1954, just after we moved from the farm to the hill north of Everett, PA the railroad tracks paralleled Route 26.  It was headed for the sand bank to pick up cars loaded with sand headed for Pennsylvania Plate Glass in Pittsburg.  It was a steam engine, cannot remember if it had any cars or not.  The engine left an impression on me.  Got my first American Flyer that Christmas.

I was a boy in Southern California in the late 1960s/ early 1970s. The blue and yellow diesels of the Santa Fe were ubiquitous--so much so that I was devastated one Christmas when my first Lionel train set came with an (ugh!) steam locomotive! Those Santa Fe trains were the first ones I was ever "exposed" to.

My first train ride, however, like probably most who grew up in Southern California during this period, was aboard one of the trains of the Santa Fe & Disneyland Railroad.

My dad was a machinist for the New York Central in Bellefontaine, Ohio around 1959 or so.  He took me to work one night to pick up his check at the roundhouse.  On the ready track was a "yard goat" probably a Lima locomotive. He asked the hostler to give us a ride to the turn table and a spin over to another track. I'll never forget that!   My grandfather was a retired electrician at the roundhouse. We would go down to the tracks almost every day to watch the trains for a while. I was around three or four at the time and I can still remember the parade of lightning stripe covered wagons and Geeps passing by. Lots more traffic through town back then.

Dad commuted on the LIRR from 1948 to 1987.  Every trip to the circus or the boat show was by train...  so pretty early I would guess.

Jon

I grew up in Metuchen NJ on the PRR main line. The tracks were near our neighborhood and I could hear trains running day and night.

My first experience seeing the train was at the station. When a GG1 headed express flew through. What a thrill!

My first ride was into NYC on the ever present MP54 electrics.

My parents were from Suffolk, VA which was always “home” to them. Dad took a job after graduating from Virginia Tech in Bluefield, W Virginia where I was born. N and W ran from Norfolk, to Roanoke, near Blacksburg, to Bluefield, and west, so I never remember a time when trains and the N and W were not nearby, usually within hearing when the wind was right.

US 460 connected these places and the tracks were often within sight.

My first train ride was aboard the Pocahontas with Mom and my brother “home” from Bluefield to Suffolk. It was an adventure, probably 1953-55.

In 1957, we moved to Suffolk and remain there today. I remarked to Paula about 6:00 that the wind must be south since we could hear the train.

Our Layout… what else could it possibly be but N & W with some Virginian and Seaboard tossed in… and Roanoke a featured city.

Oh yes, I forgot, Mom’s father, born in Roanoke, worked for N and W, moved to Suffolk, Traffic Manager for Planters Peanuts. He used to get really nice N and W prints, two of which we have framed to hang in the train room.

A pretty ordinary train.  Saturday, around age 6, Dad taking me with him from Wheaton to Chicago for a Saturday morning at his office high up in the old IH building on Michigan Ave.  On the way home, standing in the aisle of the leading 60 ft. utility combine.  The rocking tender of the elderly Pacific seen through the open baggage section, through the open front door.  Wish I could remember that loco number from the tender.  Ordinary, but probably related to why our basement is filled with the O gauge C&NW Lines.

My earliest memory of "exposure" to real railroading, i.e. steam locomotives, was in the fall of 1944 (I was 2 1/2). My father used to take me to the Yard Office at the Jersey Central RR freight yard, in our home town of Cranford, New Jersey. When not actually switching, one of the big 0-8-0 and/or 0-6-0 steam locomotives would be sitting by the Yard Office. I remember on one visit, the Reading Crusader raced westbound on the 4 track main line, with its streamlined Pacific and shinny stainless steel passenger consist (which had a round-end observation car at each end, so the train set never had to be turned at each passenger terminal).

I was thus hooked!

The memory of my 1st exposure to a real train has been lost to fog of time.  It was probably sitting in the car at a crossing and watching the train pass.  My interest in trains grew solely from seeing one run under the Christmas tree.  I loved Christmas (what kid wouldn't) and since trains were part of Christmas I liked trains.  The affinity for learning about the real thing didn't develop until adulthood.

-Greg

Just like Greg, my first recollection of a real train was sitting with my parents in the car at a RR crossing on the way home from Grandma's house for Sunday dinner.  We would count the cars going past.  That would have been the mid-50's.  My first time riding a real train was June of '74.  I attended college in Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan and graduating seniors typically didn't have final exams so we ended up with a week off between the end of regular classes and commencement.  Three of us decided to ride the Algoma Central train north out of SSM, Ontario to go backpacking in Agawa Canyon.  We spent about 5 days exploring the wilderness and getting rained on every night.  It was a great adventure!

John

Depends on what you mean by "exposed to". When I was born, our family home was across the street from the Minneapolis Northfield & Southern "high line", so I could see trains from the time I was brought home from the hospital in 1958 on. If you mean actually riding a train, that was in the later sixties - a ride on the Milwaukee Road from Mpls to St.Paul (they used to run hourly commuter runs) and the Great Northern "Badger" from Mpls to Duluth / Superior.

Well, we lived on Hudson St. in Hoboken, and my first view of a train was a 44 ton switcher moving cars into the small yard and car float right outside our ground floor living room window. The first train I probably rode on was the Phoebe Snow, or one of the Lackawanna’s name trains to visit my aunt’s outside East Stroudsburg in Tannersville.

My dad built me a Lionel layout just before I was born, so there was that.

Therefore, my hobby!

We lived about 250 yards from the Southern Pacific Coast Line in a rural area on the main RR route, Los Angeles to San Fran.  My earliest memory of a train is being in a car, driving along a highway next to the SP RR tracks with my parents and seeing a steam loc and several cars plus a CABOOSE!!! The caboose always stuck in my mind.

The road crossed the tracks in something of an "S" curve so we had to stop to wait for the train to pass.

It was just east of that "S" curve that one of the memorable opening scenes of the "Adventures of Superman" TV show (1952-58) was filmed ... if you're of that age you can't but help remember the steam loc and train bearing down on the camera.  "Faster than a speeding bullet! More powerful than a locomotive! Able to leap tall buildings at a single bound!"

Sharp memories include the Daylight and the Lark on their way to the Big Cities as well as a bazillion reefers full of citrus and hoppers full of sugar beets.  In the '50s, there was still quite a bit of manufactured products going between Los Angeles and San Francisco - so there were box cars galore on the Coast Route.

Finally got to ride a train while in third grade.