Any rail fans here?

[Rigel]

Anyone at all? I'm from Europe and I'm passionate about rail-related stuff, even if i'm still amateurish about it. I specifically like steam locomotives. They're huge, heavy and loud so what's not to like? i have skype and msn (if they still support instant messaging, i'm not sure).

 

[Minus]

No, not a rail fan because there isn't much around here except an occasional bentonite train.

Still it does look like an interesting past time and a lot of history.

 

[EveWasFramed]

I like RIDING trains. I loved the trains in Europe.

 

[Rosebolt]

I used to like trains alot when i was a kid. My dad had the same interest, and so did his dad, so i guess it kinda came natural. We'd often visit railway museums. Steam loc's were indeed the most impressive, obviously because they're less available.

Several years later i took interest in trains again, because i wanted to be crushed by one. That part also faded.

Fast forward again to now, i like riding trains and visiting all sorts of places. I never really did it due to my fears and inability to have any form of strength, but now that i do, i'm planning on making a trip every weekend.

Oh, and i also used to have the miniature stuff. Fleishmann, in my case. I spend alot of youth years doing that. I remember one of the loc's i had, which was a cheap one from Thomas the Train - which i also loved back then - was too fast for the tracks and ended up litteraly falling off the table the tracks were on, a couple of times. Good times, eh.

 

[ringwood]

Me, me!! I love trains, it's a family thing. My dad was an electrician, he worked on the trains at the CPR Ogden yards in Calgary. I vividly remember going to the train yard as a little girl to watch them. My brother, too, is a huge rail buff - he belongs to a model railway club, and he also built a large model railway down in his basement that takes up two rooms...

Myself, I love the romanticism of trains, the sheer power, the history, the smells, the sounds...well, everything! I, too, have a special love for steam trains and I collect train postcards from all over the world.

Haha, I also collect Thomas the Train stuff for my 4-year old, I probably play with it more than he does...

 

[Rosebolt]

^ That sounds very familiar. Pleased to meet you, i am your long lost brother.

 

[Socrates]

I love trains too: any kind, old, new, super fast and super slow.

 

[benj]

I like trains - am interested in freight trains and wagons.

 

[Sci-Fi]

I road a train once, didn't really like it. Had a train set as a kid, that was fun.

 

[Zorananda]

I have (mostly) fond memories of trains. The subway in Paris, Swiss trains, Italian trains, German, French. I made a little project in 5th grade about how steam engines work...just basic cause and effect with a diagram I traced out of a book. People acted like I was some sort of whiz kid...boy were they wrong.

Rail fan and not an engineer.

 

[Colster]

I would love to travel on Amtrak, it's a bucket list item for me.

 

[U-122]

i'm only a fan when i ride them. from childhood taking 2 day long trips every year. loved railroads, the sounds. didn't live near railroad but getting there, waiting for the train, riding was an adventure itself. From maybe 3-4 until 12. No matter how ****** the trip was i was looking forward to it every summer. Nothing else exciting happened in my childhood life. Now railroad is everywhere, annoying choo-choos every 5 minutes. I took a train to zoo york city a few times. Never again. There was a derailment nearby good thing chemical tanks were empty. Idiots build homes right next to railroad. Everything shakes, vibrates, i can't hear myself speak or music in earbuds when train passes by. I can't stand trains.

 

[Colster]

I only recently started to reconnect with trains, during the pandemic. It began simply by walking the dog as far as we could go, and then getting a train back. I have a station nearby my house.

Eventually we would start taking journeys further away, just to enjoy a train journey somewhere different. This developed into me taking city breaks, here and there.

I enjoyed it most when the trains were almost devoid of people. Even familiar places looked so different from another perspective. Previously, every journey was a car journey, driven by myself.

 

[ringwood]

I am. My dad was an electrician for CP Rail, so I was always around trains as a kid. I have vague memories of my first train ride and that would've been from Vancouver to Calgary when we first immigrated to Canada. In Grade 6, I was fortunate to go on a field trip with my school - we went from Calgary, AB to Field, B.C. on the VIA Rail line and travelled through the famous Spiral Tunnels - I still have wonderful memories from that trip.

I've been to all the typical spots that railway nerds go to - The Last Spike at Craigellachie (this spot celebrates the completion of the railway line uniting the East and West of Canada back in 1885), the Revelstoke Railway Museum, the local history centre here in my town that contains a model railway display and tours of historic trains cars and many, many train shows over the years. My brother is the president of the local model railway club in Alberta - his basement is completely taken over by a model railway he's been working on for years.

 

[ringwood]

Me, me!! I love trains, it's a family thing. My dad was an electrician, he worked on the trains at the CPR Ogden yards in Calgary. I vividly remember going to the train yard as a little girl to watch them. My brother, too, is a huge rail buff - he belongs to a model railway club, and he also built a large model railway down in his basement that takes up two rooms...

Myself, I love the romanticism of trains, the sheer power, the history, the smells, the sounds...well, everything! I, too, have a special love for steam trains and I collect train postcards from all over the world.

Haha, I also collect Thomas the Train stuff for my 4-year old, I probably play with it more than he does...

Heh. I see I posted on this thread way back in 2013. How time flies. I'm referring to my 4-year old son here - he's now a teenager! Still, I guess it reiterates the fact that I like trains. . . (and I still have the Thomas stuff. . . )

 

[ewomack]

We've looked into taking trains to certain destinations across the US, but every time it ended up costing about 4 times as much as flying or driving, so we haven't taken the plunge, unfortunately. These cases involved sleeper cars, so perhaps cheaper alternatives exist, but so far trains haven't proved cost effective for us at all. Given that, I've only ridden in a short commuter train from Harvard, Illinois to Chicago and I also had a chance to ride in the top portion of an old caboose at a historic roundhouse. Neither of these rides lasted very long, but both were awesome.

My friends in Europe take trains everywhere and when we visited them we also took trains everywhere. I think the US is so spread out and it takes so long to travel from one major city to another (unless you live on the east coast), that for many people trains just don't have the practicality that they could have. Once you arrive in a major city, then trains can work great, such as in St. Louis, Chicago, San Fransisco, Boston and Philadelphia. Yet some US cities don't even have extensive public transportation systems. I didn't find Washington D.C.'s public transportation helpful at all, so we ended up doing a lot of (maniacal) driving to get places. In Canada, Toronto had incredible public transportation. We barely needed a car in Toronto. But Winnipeg and Ottawa were much harder to navigate without a car. So, given all of that, my butt has spent very little time warming the seats of trains.