Any other train guys here?

[wisconsitom]

Any other RR fans out there?  I like freight railroading, big noisy clanging banging freight trains, yard switchers, the whole bit.

Did HO scale modelling as a kid, but these days I just like seeing the real thing in action.

We've got two lines in town here-Canadian National, and Fox Valley and Lake Superior.  Nice to have variety.  The latter is part of the short line empire Watco's holdings.  I don't understand how they can run three covered hoppers up to Shawano, or four boxcars out to New London....but glad they do.

[SwampDonkey]

Around 5:30 in the video is the 'old Tobique' train, as my grandmother would call it. The motion video clips in the video are done by mom's uncle in the 40's. He was a railroad man for 45 years. The fishing in the video (9:20) is my grandfather (photo and standing in the canoe) on his private owned salmon pool. That spot is Tobique Narrows. And where those buildings are with the track beside (4:50) , that would be torn down and a dam built there in the 50's. That was the first homestead on the Tobique, my grandfather's grandfather. The bridge in the video is for cars.

Tobique Narrows - New Brunswick Historical - YouTube

[sawguy21]

Rail service ended here quite a few years ago, the remaining mills were shipping by truck and the fruit industry died. CP tore up their tracks through Enderby but CN resumed service for a few mills and two pellet plants although the tracks are in poor shape. I am glad to see them back until I have to wait for one blocking the main intersection while switching at the pellet plant in the neighboring town.

[SwampDonkey]

Salmon River Trestle

[SwampDonkey]

Tracks here were falling away into the river because of flooding, let the maintenance go to pot. Tore the tracks up and made trails. It's funny because the river valley is where all the industry is and the train was used. Now all there is is a train through 100's of miles of nowhere to go to the hub in Moncton, bypassing all the industry. :  Irving has his own  train to his mills. The Bangor and Aroostook in Maine goes up into Easton to a mill and a food processor, not far from here. I don't think they go into Presque Isle or Caribou, which are small cities near there. Haven't seen a train in town here since 1986, came to the feed mill.

[Roxie]

I feel particularly blessed to live where I can hear the freight train about 3/10 of a mile away. They are headed into a Pepperidge farm plant and Herr's potato chip factory about three times a week. Some of the local crossings don't even have blinking lights, so the conductor lays on the horn heavily. I know when the Amish children have run out to signal the train to blow it's horn, because he'll give them the "shave and a haircut" two bits. 

[Roundhouse]

Oh yeah, as a kid, in college, then a couple years full-time working on railroad specialty magazines, since then photography, writing, maps for books and magazines freelance. We've had the Wisconsin Central then Canadian National in the backyard for 21 years.

[wisconsitom]

Righto....Wisconsin Central, what a twisted history.

@Roxie, we're blessed to have horns nearby.  Actually not supposed to blow them in town anymore, but still often do 

I'm in favor of having a loud noise get my attention when one of them is nearby, and of course, sound good off in the distance.

I'm old but too young to have seen much steam.  I love old diesel power,. Alco RS3...EMD switchers...old 4-axle geeps.  We get lots of pulp bolts, chip cars, and lumber rolling thru this town, speaking of forestry 😉.

[thecfarm]

We use to see cars load of pulp.
My father unloaded many with a pulp hook.
I use to hear the horns about 10 miles from here.
The wife was shocked the first time she heard them here.
I have not heard the horns for a while. Maybe I should turn off the chainsaw and tractor for a while.   ;)
The china closet, in the dining room, my Grandparents went to town to pick up with something drawn by horses, to pick up at the train station around 1924. My Aunt said my Father was not walking when they brought it home.

[rusticretreater]

In the great valley of Virginia, we have CSX and Norfolk Southern alive and well.  We can hear the freight trains pulling through regularly.  South of Elkton Virginia are the Coors and Merck plants, and 30 miles north of that in Front Royal is the Virginia Inland Port.  There is a two mile perfectly straight section of double tracks and there are mile long trains, 4 diesels in front and 2 in the center staging for the trips north and south on the single line.

There are scenic trains north in Romney, West Virginia-Potomac Eagle w/ 1950's locomotives(along the Potomac river through the area Eagles have their nests) and the James River Rambler south along the James River.  The Rambler also uses old locomotives but they have two passenger cars and two open air cars.  They took two pulpwood cars, cleaned em up and put benches down the center of them.  Its quite the thrill riding the open air cars when you cross the James River and have an unobstructed view.

[Ljohnsaw]

I live about 5 miles east of Roseville.  It is about 15 miles NE of Sacramento.  It is the largest rail yard west of the Mississippi, they say.  Just east of Roseville was the original yard in Loomis which was THE fruit shipping capital of the West Coast.  Not so much anymore.  Out of Roseville there are 3 lines.  The east-west line that goes up through the Sierras (right next to my cabin property) over Donner Summit and through Truckee to Reno.  West to San Francisco.  Then, north out of Roseville is the Feather River Route that goes up the valley towards Shasta and on to Oregon.

I hear the trains blowing in the evenings quite often and when the wind is right, chugging up the grade into the foothills when going east.  The chugging will cut in and out as they go through short tunnels.  At my cabin, there is a train every hour, 24 hours a day.  It is down the hill and stuck between the east and west lanes of I80 for a bit and then goes into a series of tunnels/snow sheds.  Depending on the wind, sometimes you hear very little, sometimes you think your standing 100' away from the tracks.

Nothing like the sound of distant chugging or a whistle blowing!

And then there is that idiot that has a train whistle on his pickup that just loves to lean on it behind little cars just below my house. :

[wisconsitom]

Great stuff, y'all.

Stopped at the freight yard behind Miller Electric (Miller welders) to check out the action.  Small CN consist barreled straight thru S bound to Neenah, and the Foxy Line guys were assembling a train in the yard.

[Resonator]

Yes, back in the day I was very big into trains. Was fortunate to have lots of adventures and see many sights following trains, along with diesel and steam excursion rides.
Got away from it all to chase other interests and dreams in recent years, though probably could still tell the difference between a SD45 and a GP30 (or an SDL39). ;D

[trapper]

Tom we live on the same lines as you but by me 35 miles south we live close to the yards The road we take to go to town can be blocked for 45 minutes at a time.  When coming home from town we go 3 miles out of our way to avoid that crossing.  Still the trains are not as annoying as the model airplanes which fly  a quarter mile from our house and crash on our fields and woods and not ask to go on my land to retrive them

[wisconsitom]

Yeah, CN especially runs some long trains.  A real busy crossing in town here is malfunctioning such that a RR guy has to flag traffic, a real cluster at this intersection.  Peeps come up to the crossing at a red traffic light.  Watched cross arms come down right on truck of fool who pays no attention to those tracks at that light.  Folks are nuts, half asleep.  Stop right under cross arms!

[SwampDonkey]

I can hear the Bangor-Aroostook whistle blow when it comes up to Easton, Maine. I'm not far from the border. But even that train does a lot of travelling through no place, it misses central Houlton, down by the 95. Trains don't go to the small towns around here anymore. Those places were once lined with 'siding' and a lot of them were potato sheds. I have hand loaded rail cars in town with 100 lb sack of taters in my teens. We used to have to light a salamander stove in those cars to keep the potatoes from freezing. And the rail road was only responsible for hauling, not keeping stoves lit. :

Dad had also cut, loaded, hauled and handled lots of $20 a cord pulp onto trains in the 60's. You worked for your $20 bucks to. No place for anyone with manicured hands.

I remember one of the first FF members here I met, he had to inspect my hands for signs of hard work. You betcha bub.  :D :D

[kantuckid]

I miss trains. Growing up in Topeka, KS we had RR's from all over Criss crossing the city. MO Pacific, Union Pacific, Rock Island, and of course the old ATSF now the Burlington RR. The business page in the newspaper had a fairly permanent header listing Sante Fe retirements and promotions. Many in my family railroaded. A neighbor worked for A&P supermarkets after a long career with Railway Express (a forerunner of DHL, UPS and such delivery services). He lost that entire pension when railroads tanked out, then he lost his pension from A&P tanked out. Ended up as a hardware clerk and that was before 401K days so he retired on meager savings and SS. The good old days were not kind to many with rail related jobs.
I worked for the Sante Fe in their huge mega Topeka Shops area. The only job I ever got by Knowing someone-Dads uncle worked there got me in. I'd quit a supermarket job in a privately owned store where the guy was a nasty man towards us all to go railroad-I was union labor on a mobile track crane handling switch coupling out of the metal treatment ovens, newly rehabbed car & engine axles and rehabbed wheels plus the used ones that came in for a re-do. Pay was $2.08 hrly. back then, after 5-6 months, I got a phone call offering me a store manager job at more money in my old store.
In my skilled trades work later at Goodyear Tire plant, many of my mentors in apprenticeship came from those Sante Fe shops tradesmen, Goodyear, seeing the RR's dying off and that skilled trade supply dwindle, instituted the first apprenticeship program in the plants history, me included.
Before I left KS, my rural river cabin I/we lived in was directly above a double Rock Island track. It takes some time but you get to a place where the sounds of those trains passing by is a sort of lullaby.
I was in the service with a UP RR engineer/civi job and he made decent money. 
Our neighbor when we went back to college was a C&O engineer and went back to his rr job when he got a dgree-paid better. 

Cute train story: In the beginning, when Rock Island still ran passenger trains coming past my cabin, I showered outdoors on a brick pad beside my deep well water pump. Had a garden hose with a brass showerhead tied to a small tree and a soap dish on the freezeproof tap there. I'd be out there lathering up-> ala naturel 8) and here came the train! They were moving on fast out there, so probably not all that exciting?

[sawguy21]

We had an idiot who stopped on the crossing while waiting for a red light on a major road parallel to the tracks. She had been using the route  for years so knew about the trains yet won a partial settlement because the railway had not cleared the brush back far enough to allow a clear field of vision. Well good morning! Would you not stop until the crossing was clear allowing you to safely proceed?