The Train Appreciation Thread!! !

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Everyone knows that people on the spectrum like trains, right? Yes, we're all obsessed with trains. No, not really. But I, myself, am magnetically fascinated by trains - the sounds they make, the way they look, the way the tracks look, all the patterns! That smooth, rocking motion that you feel when riding on a train. I like to walk along train tracks, watch trains. Yes, I've even done the old make-the-train-flatten-a-penny trick! And my first cat was named after a freight train company logo, Chessie.



I also love music about trains! Let's face it - American music, including all song format genres, would not be what it is today without Jimmie Rodgers, the singing, yodeling brakeman! (If you want to argue about this, PM me and I'll send you a dissertation on the subject.)

in his railroad brakeman uniform:


And when Son House (mentor to Robert Johnson) was rediscovered in the 1960's he was working as a train conductor!! While working on the railroad, he wrote a song about this train, the Empire State Express:



OK, I could go on and on about trains and American music, so I'll stop and add some more trains pics for the viewing pleasure of anyone else who loves them.






Please post anything and everything that has to do with trains!!

Last edited by EvilKimEvil on 22 May 2008, 8:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.

there is a train track that runs right through town and another one that runs right on the edge of town. I like the precise timing of arrival every morning...I wake up to the sounds of the train in town and go to sleep with the sound of the train every night. During the day I wait for the afternoon train so I can count the cars and watch the rotating wheels. I wouldn't say I like them as much as you but they are fun to have around. I've never been on one (not counting the one at DisneyLand), but maybe some day I will. The only thing that bothers me about them is their loud sound. I wear earplugs when I'm outside watching them. I also like listening to the song "Train of Thought". It's not really about trains but it has some cool train sounds with the music.

I have to add something else: old fashioned train hobos!!









Of course people still hop trains today, for a wide variety of reasons, but I like the old pictures better. And modern train hopping is technically illegal in the US (I think) so that's enough of a reason for me not to post pictures related to it.

My dad is an absolute train buff!

There is a paper mill in my town which means, we have a busy train system. I used to play around the trains when I was a kid. We'd crush pennies or stones, hitch rides, and occasionally, throw rocks at the brand-new cars, as the train passed by. Thinking back, I had to do thousands of dollars worth in damage, to the cars. Oh well, it was fun back then.

I also enjoy looking at older trains, like steam engines. The vintage mechanical systems, fascinate me.

Yeah, I like the vintage mechanical systems too. It would be really, really cool to convert an old train car into a house! I bet it's been done, but I couldn't find a picture so I'm going to post more old train pictures instead.

I like the third photo the best.

I like the photos with sad-looking people wearing dirty old-fashioned clothes. Life was hard back then. It's hard to imagine just how hard.

HEY! I KNOW YOU! YOU'RE MY BROTHER!

Actually my brother and I used to climb aboard the car carriers and pull off the gas caps.
We threw rocks once into a boxcar and two hoboes came to the door looking out to see us.
We were hidden in the tall grass (we were 12 y.o. back then).

In this same town.. Sanderson, Texas... we used to catch the train on one end of town and ride it to the other end across the bridge so we could go to the Dairy King(not the Dairy Queen) to get ice cream.

We flattened nickels and pennies (still got one of each) and I tried a quarter once.

We used to go out on the old trestles and climb up to get the glass insulators from the power lines.

There's a really cool bridge out by Dell Rio, Texas we called "The Pecos High Bridge".
Duane and I were out on it once trying to get through the trapdoor so we could go underneath.
A train came onto the trestle and got really close to us.
We got down below and crawled around a bit before getting out of there.

My stepdad worked for the Southern Pacific Railroad.
That's why we lived in Sanderson.
For a few years during the summers, we would ride the Amtrack from Sanderson to Los Angeles to visit Disneyland.
The L.A. Train Station was BEAUTIFUL! I loved old train stations, they were really works of art.

Once shortly after we moved to California, when the train still ran here in Humboldt County, some people in a tiny community called Shively got a special passenger train run from Arcata to Shiveley for a picnic.
I got to take my daughter on it. That was really cool!

The second time she got to ride a train was from Montreal to Vancouver!
Four days on the train... beautiful country, interesting people from different parts of the world.

Trains are really cool!

And Jimmie Rogers is the grand old man of train musicians... as far as I'm concerned.

See what you did Kim? You got me started and now I can't stop!

I also used to work on trains... tearing them apart and putting them back together.. the cars, that is.
I worked for the Texas Railway Car Corporation in Ranger, Texas, as a welder trainee, while my brother worked as an engineer trainee.
He got to ride the engines around the yard moving cars into and out of the work building.

I got to operate these awesome heavy-lift cranes that we'd use to pick up a box off the wheels so we could work on the different parts.
Mostly I just cut stuff off the cars though.

Okay.. I'll save the rest of my train stories for later

I've always been into trains. When I was very little, we lived in a town with a commuter rail system and I was always fascinated by it. In addition, I had a Duplo train that I played with all the time, and Thomas the Tank Engine toys and such.

Even today, I'm still into trains, and other forms of transports, such as planes and monorails. I'll spend hours in Wikipedia just surfing different articles about trains, ships, and such.

Thank you all for putting your stories on here. I was CRAZY about trains when I was little. I am into cars now, but I still like trains a lot.
Here's a few random train pictures:


Thomas the Tank



Enjoy!

Hmmm . . . . maybe we need a car appreciation thread!

And those are nice pictures of old trains. I like the weird looking ones, like that train-crane thing.

Is that some sort of commuter train in the first one that CA_NES posted?

There's another one way up the tracks as though they are heading up a mountain.

I think the one with the crane could be useful up in Alaska to pluck moose of the tracks

They like to walk on the railbeds during the winter because the Alaska railroad plows the tracks.
Moose seem to be quite lazy in snow, even with those long legs they have.
Unfortunately, the trains hit a moose every now-and-then and it gets killed.

You can find a couple of trains that were just left in place up in Alaska.. from the mining days.

Oh, I should see if I can find a picture of a snowplow mounted on the engine... they're really monster looking!
I'd hate to get sucked into one of those!

Here's a modern day snowplow...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tF2ZPRmocs4[/youtube]

Here's the rotary snowplow that I was thinking of...

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frBh5vO_2g0[/youtube]

Here's one with a moose on the tracks and this time the engineer was able to keep from running it down...
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jXrSY62IcfE[/youtube]

I like the opening credits of the TV show, Heartbeat, where they show that train going through.

Hey, does light rail count?