philosophygirl78
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- Aventura, Florida
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Vintage trains
- Thread starter Blackthorn
- Start date
philosophygirl78
A-List Customer
- Messages
- 445
- Location
- Aventura, Florida
GHT
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,349
- Location
- New Forest
What seems like many years ago, our neighbours were going through a difficult patch in their marriage. To give them time together, we took their two daughters, aged just seven and eight years old, for a trip on a real Thomas the Tank engine hauled train ride. About eight seconds or so into the video, you will see what I think is named as Daisy the Diesel. Daisy was parked at one of the stations, the driver was inviting small children to come aboard and handle the controls. He gave a big smile to one of our charges and lifted her aboard. Silly man. The little one, of course, couldn't wait to touch this, control that, spin that wheel. After her visit to the train's cab, she was gently lifted down onto the platform. Daisy went off down the line with her driver forever wiping his hands down his overalls. Told you he was a silly man. Our sweet angelic one had been eating candy floss, (cotton candy) by ripping the candy from the stick with her fingers. She then spread her sticky fingers all over Daisy's controls. Then driver's facial reaction was priceless.
GHT
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,349
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- New Forest
The Flying Scotsman is flying again:
- Messages
- 16,873
- Location
- New York City
Re Flying Scotsman - great video, thank you. Do you know if they plan to run it as a tourist train, for special events or what?
GHT
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,349
- Location
- New Forest
Flying Scotsman is to be housed at our National Rail Museum, in York. Click on that link and it will give you an inventory of the engine's schedule. Whilst you are on that site, take a look at the collection. If you like steam engines you will love the museum.
Progress on The Big Boy No.4014 is chugging, (pun intended) along! https://www.up.com/aboutup/special_trains/steam/locomotives/4014/index.shtml
Great thread.....Owwoso MI has a nice train museum that holds a Trainfest every few years. Worth the trip, 5 working steam engines including this one.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pere_Marquette_1225
http://www.michigansteamtrain.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pere_Marquette_1225
http://www.michigansteamtrain.com/
GHT
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,349
- Location
- New Forest
Found some wonderful material at a vintage fair today. My next shirt is in the making:
STEVIEBOY1
One Too Many
- Messages
- 1,042
- Location
- London UK
I travelled on the UK mainline a few days ago on a train that was hauled by the steam loco "Tornado" had a great time. There were loads of people taking photos along the way. (All being well, later in this year, I am also due to have a trip hauled on the mainline by "Flying Scotsman".)
Dirk Wainscotting
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- Irgendwo
My dad just bought a Flying Scotsman engine for his (rather extensive) spare room model railway line. I haven't seen it yet. The entire line is constructed as he remembers trains from the mid 1950s. Basically he's spending my inheritance on all this.
To paraphrase a famous quote, "I spent 90% of my money on wine, women and trains, the rest I wasted!"
There was a vintage J 611 steam engine pulling an excursion train made up of vintage passenger cars that came by where I live today. I was lucky enough to get a couple good photos of my old ’48 Plymouth and the train as it passed through Nebo.
As I was sitting beside the railroad tracks, waiting for the train to pass, my thoughts turned to many years ago when I was a boy and used to come to about this exact same spot with my aunt and wait to see the trains go by. My aunt Hazel would tell me how she and her friends used to put pins on the tracks in the shape of an "X" and let the train run over them. That would mash the pins together and make a pair of play scissors for their dolls. This would have been sometime between1913 and 1917.
As we sat there beside the railroad tracks talking, we would wait for the mail train to come by and pick up the mail. The Post Master, Bob Ballew, would climb a tall post and hang the mail sack on a big hook. As the train came speeding by, a hook on the mail car would grab the sack off the post. That sure was a sight to see, and one I'll remember for the rest of my life.
I also remember the passenger trains that came by on a regular basis. We would sit by the tracks and wave at the people as the train passed. Sometimes the passengers would wave back and sometimes they wouldn't, but always the porters and conductors would wave at me.
When my Grandmother and Grandfather Brown first moved to Nebo in 1906, they lived in a house beside the railroad tracks not too far up from where the old Nebo Depot used to be. I remember my grandmother telling me that some of the "rougher sort" of men in Nebo used to get drunk and shoot at the "colored car" as it passed. She always followed up that story by saying it was too bad the train didn't run over those men. I think about that story and about how far we had come in my lifetime until just recently, when bigotry, racism, and hatred began rearing its ugly head once again. When will we ever learn to get along and treat each other with respect and dignity? Life is too short to hate and be cruel.
It's funny the things you will think about when sitting by the railroad tracks ...
When I was a boy, I used to spend a lot of time at my Grandmother's house. The house sits on the hill above the railroad tracks. At night the long coal trains would pass by and the windows in the house would shake. I really loved that sound.
The old house was left to me and when we moved back in full time several years ago, the trains passing in the night and the rattling windows was a welcomed sound.
- Messages
- 16,873
- Location
- New York City
Growing up, we lived pretty close to a train station on what had been the Pennsylvania Railroad's Mainline and which had become both an Amtrak and NJ Transit mainline. I have vivid memories of lying in bed at night listening to the trains go by - hearing the whistle, etc. - and feeling good. For some reason, trains, their sounds, motion, look, all of it has always appealed to me even as a little boy before I thought about any of this stuff and just responded emotionally.
GHT
I'll Lock Up
- Messages
- 9,349
- Location
- New Forest
It's only my theory, but the reason your Father has fond reminisces of trains in the 1950's is because it was the 'boy toy' of the day. Austerity was with us from the end of WW2 right up until the sixties. We had no play stations, e-tchnology or I-phones. Our parents couldn't afford much, although most of us had a bicycle, which we would put to good use, cycling off to "see the trains." In the fifties, there had been no overhaul of the railway system, no ripping up the tracks, you could travel from the smallest hamlet to the larger cities by train. The big intersections, where numerous lines met, were magnets for small boys, notebooks in hand, jotting down the numbers of the steam engines. The evocative names of some of train journeys such as The Royal Scot or The Cornish Riviera conjured up images of a classic era. Those trains to us were like Concorde to a future generation.
Your Dad is probably still that schoolboy, in his memories, watching his models, wistfully remembering collecting the engine numbers, we were all like that back then. We were poor without being impoverished, simple things brought the greatest of pleasure, and the world felt safer. Almost everyone was without a phone, yet those families rarely had cause for concern when their boys went off on their bicycles and only getting home just as their evening meal was being served.
If you want to see an incredible model railway, google: Pete Waterman's Model Railways. He has accurately reproduced the station at Leamington Spa, where, as a boy, he spent hours indulging in and soaking up, trains.
Oh and by the way, you see that printed fabric of American steam locos above?
