Please enlighten us with your story as you were growning up along side the railroad back in the age of steam.
I grew up in Darby Pa. The PRR Main through to Phila Was at the End of My Yard and down an Embankment. The Darby Station was 1 block down the Street. I spent countless hours sitting on the top of this embankment and just waiting for every train on the 4-track Main to come along This was in the 50's .Steam went its way and I watched it. Not knowing at that age just what I was witnessing. On the grand ocassion when two heavy freights on the inside tracks would pass the Smoke would just about choke me but I would jump and wave and believe it or not would receive waves back. Then the GG1's. how sleek and massive. Even the local Mu's were good for a wave. Boy what I would give for just one of those days back. Even the part when my Mom would yell because i wore that smoke into the house. Jim:
When I was about 11 years old, my family moved into a new home (early 1950's) about .6 of a mile from the Pennsylvania RR. I used to listen to the Pennsy passenger trains coming from and going to Chicago early in the morning. One came south at 2 am and the other went north at 4 am. It was the swan song of steam. Diesel was already replacing steam on the passenger runs, but I remember the steam switcher that used to stand at 5th & Main chugging away while the crew grabbed lunch. I remember the coaling tower at Florida Station and the water tanks and the freight and passenger stations here in Anderson. I remember the steam whistle of those early morning passenger runs sounding like a lost soul calling to whomever would listen. They called to me across the night and I listened. I listened and I think that this make me a future rail fan and modeler. When we would drive to southern Indiana to visit my Grandparents, we would run with the New York Central for several miles and I would watch the fast passenger trains pull ahead of us as they passed and the slower freights carrying their mysteriously loaded cars on to other places. I looked forward to seeing those trains every time we took that trip. There is much. much more, but that'll do.
I have always been, since a very early age, facinated by the sights and sounds of steam locomotives. I am not a train nut per se, but admittedly I have a deep passion for the texture and smell of hot, oily steam. I can remember sultry summer nights, returning from my grandparents house, my father driving on a highway with a railroad track that ran along side; and often seeing a train with a large steam locomotive .. sometimes with two or more on the front, and with one or more pushing near the rear. I can vividly recall a bright flickering glow observed under the locomotives between the wheels, and under the cab, sometimes flashing as bright as fireworks. I was always curious to know what caused that glow. There was a railroad track that ran down the middle of the street on a raised, unpaved island where I lived. It was a spur line that ran to somewhere I did not know, but to the west. The mainline from which it came, was about a mile away to the east. Once a day, early in the morning, a dirty, grimey diesel engine blowing an obnoxious air horn would pass by making it's trip west, pulling a few old boxcars, flatcars and a caboose. It would then make it's return late in the afternoon or early evening. Often on Saturdays, the train would be pulled by an old steam locomotive. I could hear its sad whistle as it entered the spur from the main line, and the sound of it would always compel me to leap out of my bed. I would quickly get dressed and run outside to watch that huge mechanical marvel, with all its moving parts and heart pounding sounds of chugging, hissing and clanking as it passed by me ... puffing white steam, belching acrid smoke from its stack, it's whistle blowing and the bell ringing as it swung through in great arcs, almost to upside down. I would stand there in awe, waiving at the old gentleman who rode in the cab, and who always smiled broadly as he waived back at me. I would watch that train, straining my ears to hear the sweet sound of exhausting steam until I could no longer hear it. I knew then that I wanted to be a steam locomotive engineer. One Friday evening I walked along the track and found two ties that were set wide and crooked. I had a plan, so using my hands, I stealthily dug the gravel out from between the ties. Early the next morning I heard that whistle and I knew the steam engine was coming. I ran outside to the place where I had excavated and laid down between the rails, face up, with my shoulders wedged between the ties and my feet sticking out from under the rail. Through the rails, I could hear the clickity-clack of wheels growing louder and louder. The ties that my shoulders were against began to tremble, and then the ground that I was laying upon. Closer and closer the train rumbled, and my heart was racing with excitment! As the front of the locomotive passed over me the rail pressed down on my shins with each wheelset that crossed over, (I had not thought of that) and there was so much dust and dripping hot fluid that I could not keep my eyes open to see what it looked like under there, or where that mysterious glow came from! Obviously, the engineer and fireman did not see me, because the train kept on going without slowing down. My poor mother overheard me talking about this incident with my sister a couple of years ago. With her hands on both sides of her face and wide eyes she yelled at me, "you did what????" I thought she was going to have a heart attack! The memory of the first time I pulled the throttle, feeling the whole of the locomotive gently raise up, as if taking a deep breath, then slowly and effortlessly move forward, is still strong in my mind. I am now the old gentleman who rides in the cab waiving at children who stand near the tracks watching the steam locomotive pass by, as I did as a youth..... so many years ago, and yet .. it seems like only yesterday.
