Does This Guy Like Trains?

my dad was the freight and ticket agent in those stations in those little towns growing up.
always the small towns, along the same one major corridor, often the furthest from larger cities at either end.
we were further from the major towns then where the local industrial switch run turned back or tied up at.
(though the work train would tie up there, and we had one or two small local industries. a rock ramp for silica rock and a ball mill that made a fine powder out of it, a propane dealer, a automotive lubricants distributor, owned by a major oil company. there was an lcl car at the freight house, and an end ramp for unloading earth moving equipment, oh and the fruit shed with its big cold storage room)
and there were only two or three passenger trains each way daily. often at odd or inconvenient hours. but there were also five or six or even eight bus schedules each way every day that also came right into town. between the two, you didn't really need a car to get by, even though the nearest real city, or even large town, might 30 or even 50 miles away.
and they always had a real down town, even if it was only one side of a couple of blocks long, with the tracks on the other side of the street from it.
and it was a less then half mile walk, from the house down to the grocery and whatever other stores the town had.
a hardware, a meat market, a bank, a movie house, a post office, the gas and electric company to pay your utility bills.
mom and pop resteraunts. no fast food franchises in those days. (nor strip malls)
and a pharmacy that was also the book and magazene store, it doubled as a toy store too, though there was also a five and dime.
you had to go to the larger towns for sears or j.c.penny's or monkey wards.
there were a lot of things you had to go to the larger towns for, or mail order.
but my dad's pass, because he worked for the railroad, meant we could ride the trains free, and a trip to the larger towns or cities, was kind of like a mini-vacation to make a day of it.
a bus ticket cost about the same as gas to drive a car, and that was less then 50 cents a gallon. the station was also always the western union telegraph office.
his job involved more then just selling tickets and freight. the trains all had two way radios, but printed train orders were also required. switches and signals were also his responsibility, coordinating with the dispatcher and foremen of track forces. os'ing (recording the time they went by, and watching for overheated axil bearings) the many freight trains that went by. lots of little pieces of paper, all typed up on manual typewriters that had upper case only.
mechanical calculators in those days too. electronic ones didn't exist yet.

and the people who worked for the railroad. it was kind of like a tribe, where everybody watched out for each other.

 

In one of those small towns, the branch line ended there, so the local was the only train that ever came into town. They could park their train for as long as they wanted, anywhere they wanted. It was like their own private railroad.

Another town where we lived, the local made use of one track on the main line, and lots of other trains zipped by on the other, in both directions.

My dad used to be one of the industrial guys who might call the local office late in the afternoon and say, "We're loading one last car right now. Can you pick it up before you leave town?" He and the station agent knew each other very well. If the agent recognized me or my sister, he never let us know it.

If my husband had known me back then, my dad could have gotten him a free ride on the local train, in the engine or caboose. He would have loved that. They used to bend a lot of rules. Not anymore.

Funny how all those things make better sense to me now, now that I understand how business works.

 

only trains Ive ever been on were illegally hopped and Septa..

 

the sacramento division of the s.p. (oldest bit of track, part of the first transcontinental railroad, in the west, between roseville california and sparks nevada) was always kind of strict about non-train crew on the engines. but my dad being friends with the devision road forman of engines, i did get a couple of cab rides. biggest thrill of my childhood and adolescence. after having seen my first model railroad, in another friend of my dad's basement, in 1949 when i was right around a year old.

 

and the chills have absolutELY NOTHING... to do... with how cold it is....here

fucking lol great video.

 

lol i like how his vocie changes when hes saying that.

and when hes like YEA!!! WOO!!!!!!! "I wonder who TC Durant is..hmm.." WOO hHOO!!!!!!!

 

this is crazy... THIS IS CRAZY

 

I am happy for him though.. lol

 

I think my favorite part is how wild he get after the train blows its horn

 

I put coins on the railroad tracks to flatten them. It works!

 

those must be some heavy coins if they can flatten railroad tracks.

 

I've been working on the railroad
All the live long day

I've been working on the railroad
Just to pass the time away

Can't you hear the whistle blowing
Rise up so early in the morn

Don't you hear the captian shouting
Dinah, blow your horn

Dinah, won't you blow
Dinah, won't you blow
Dinah, won't you blow your horn
Dinah, won't you blow
Dinah, won't you blow
Dinah, won't you blow your horn



Hotwater

 

never could figure out what a captain was supposed to be on a railroad.
conductor i suppose on a freight train, but that doesn't fit the context of the song.
division superintendent might. but his captaining is from an office that isn't often seen.
trainmaster i suppose, who would be the boss of the chief train dispatcher.

of course all these positions have different names in other parts of the world.

i'm pretty sure the song is about and has its origin with maintainence of way forces rather then train or communications or shop forces.
so i'm guessing the formen of steel gangs, powder gangs and so on, was probably the origeonal intent.

british maintainence of way forces were in the early days called navigators or navies, so i suppose it would make some kind of sense to call their formen 'captains'.

always puzzled me about that in kindergarten, where we were taught those kind of rymes to keep us occupied and more or less semi-managable.

actually the origin of the dinah bit is known. blowing horns sounds like something an engineer or fireman would do, but the legend i read some where, refers to the lunch whistle, time to take a break and go to beans. i have read more about it somewhere, but its really pretty silly in the context of railroading this side of the 19th century.

 

If you really want to see a whole bunch of grown men act like children over a machine, just go to any event in the eastern US where this engine is scheduled to appear:



Currently, it seems to be the ultimate rock star among trains. A few times, I've been on special scenic excursion trains in the mountains (NC, VA, WV) pulled by this engine. It always amazes me how guys will climb up on all kinds of precarious perches to get pictures, trespass on anybody's land, and take crazy, foolish chances in their cars as they try to race ahead of the train to get set up for more pictures. I've seen people bring bucket trucks (the kind used in outdoor electrical work) to take pictures from above, and I was on one train that was chased by a helicopter. Man, these people are over the edge. Some wear railroad outfits covered in buttons they've collected, and they wear radio scanners blasting out the dispatcher's voice. It's like a cult.

Fortunately, there are always some normal people on those trains too, and some kids.

The 611 is based at a museum in Roanoke, Virginia.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMxJtMoTnx8

 

there are no such thing as normal people. only different ways different people have of having fun.
really the least interesting thing people do is consume alky, or other mind altering substances.
it is true though, that a lot of train people don't share very many of the other things that interest me.
the friction between technology fans, art fans, science fans and environment enthusiasts, i will never make sense of.
all are things to enjoy, and if done in harmony with each other, make the world a better place.
the people who seem silly to me, are the ones who are all about money and trying to impress each other.
mundanes in other words. what in life do they enjoy? why do they not want to? what do they think they are gaining?
no. to me, the gratuitously conventional are the non-player characters in life.

in the west we have some surviving steam people go crazy about too.
i'm happy for all the people who have an interest like this that brings them joy.
same with furrys and science fiction geeks.

i just totally don't understand people who don't have an interest in some kind of technology, or some aspect of nature.

 

I would add history to that, which partially overlaps with technology.

I'll take a rabid railfan over the typical country club golf snob.

 

oh good lord, i'm glad i don't have to know those kind of people exist. i see those kind of mcmansion developments, with their gates and all, and i see sucker written all over them.

 

For that kind of money, how big of a model railroad could you build?

 

i'd buy the golf course and turn it into one.