Once it gets in your blood....

[JCagle]

 A shared passion for anything can bring people together, and I'm reminded of this every time I go to the Salisbury Wye on a Saturday or Sunday and see pretty much the same 5 or 6 older gentlemen that can almost always be found sitting in a circle talking about the "golden years" of the railroad, and getting involved in arguements over G.E. vs E.M.D. and many trivial things such as paint schemes ect.  Eventually this leads to discussions of their latest ailments that are real or imagined. This is pretty much the same reason we are all here. We may all have differences in opinions (you know what they say about those), but in the end we all share a love of something that brings us all together. We've all been bitten by the bug.

I was trying to find the words to explain to a co-worker of mine that had asked me what is so interesting about the railroad. I couldn't realy find a logical explanation off the top of my head. I said well it's kind of like some people are baseball fans while others like football. Once it gets in your blood it's not going to go away.

Later that day I was thinking about the exchange and I asked myself one question.... When did the bug bite me? After a little bit of thinking I determined that it was something that had just kind of been there all my life. Growing up in the Charlotte area meant one thing.. a trip to Tweetsie Railroad in Blowing Rock, NC. The park is celebrating it's 50th year of operations this year, so it was a staple for everyone in the area that is close to my parent's age and younger. It was just one of those things that people took their kids to do. Going to Tweetsie growing up put the excitement in my blood for the railroad.

As I grew up I put away my toy trains and kind of went away from the railroad for a time, and of course there is that coming of age where perfume and gasoline run in your blood. Through all of this I came back to something I had loved since I was a kid when I was in college. The Great Smokey Mountains Railway was based out of Dillsboro, which was about 10 minutes away from campus, and after befrinding Bart we would end up taking trips down to the depot to see the engine leave, and chase the train along highway 74 through the Tuckaseegee River Gorge . I grew to love the thrill of the chase, and then I decided to add in the passion for photography that I've had my whole life. Ever since that time I've done nothing but confirm that the bug is in my blood.

My question to you is when did it hit you, and how did you know?

[nscnotp1]

It all started for me growing up in Harrodsburg. Everytime I hear of a train coming, I always would go outside to sit and watch it go by, whether at my Granny's by the tracks or at my grandmother's house up the street from the railroad, there I was watching the trains go poking by.  ;D

[E.M. Bell]

Iv been into it for as long as I can remember...hell, its cheaper than chasing women, and I was never good at golf, or baseball, or playing the guitar...or chasing women. Something to do you know...

My dad was a modeler from the time I was hatched, and we lived hard by the Southern/NS mainline. All I had to do to watch trains was look out the front door. We had family friends that worked for the Southern. We would take family outing to see trains from time to time, so I guess it just evolved from there.  The photography aspect of it sealed the deal for me, and its my main pastime nowdays, besides working and keeping one step ahead of the wife's frying pan...

[JCagle]

EMB- You forgot your other passion and hobby..... Chasing down guinness and skillets of chili cheese fries!

[Tweetsiefireman]

Hmm...growing up seeing nothing but narrow gauge steam engines at Tweetsie and riding behind said engines. Seeing the Southern's "Greatest Show on Earth" 4501 trips thru Charlotte for water and seeing that big green engines roll into town was the highlight of my year. In college chasing GSMR's 2-8-0 #1702 and eventually going to work for them for two years, after a summer spent hand firing the very locomotives that I grew up riding behind and idolizing at Tweetsie. It all came full circle, Ive got cinders in my blood stream that were injected at age 1, and they will never leave me. I occasionally in the winter will play around with the camera shooting the same old widecabs on NS, but for me, its just a appetizer for late April in Blowing Rock.

[J 484 fan]

I'm not sure when it started for me exactly other than at childhood like the others. We moved to South Bend when I was four and I can remember several times sitting at the crossing at Ardmore Trail trying to count the number of cars on the trains. I remember seeing GT, C&NW and of course CR. I remember on trips to Chicago seeing big UPS trains highballing towards the Windy City as we rolled along the toll road. Then like others perfume, gasoline among a few bad things took presidence in my life. Then about four years ago I got bit big time (don't remember exactly how though). I have recently been affected even more as I am now playing the game Yard Duty and am doing the map for a jct in Goshen that leads out of Elkhart Yard toward Airline in TOL and south towards I believe Anderson, IN. Gets interesting when your going on a drive to find out names of industries that will be on the map and seeing somewhat what they do and how the RR is involved. the map for Elkhart is in progress too as well as some industries another guy and myself found on the Kzoo, MI  line. The more I look the more interested I get. Now if I can just find a good camera without paying an arm and a leg for it, I'll be all set. As to trying to explain this to a non-RR fan....like I've heard some bikers I've known say about Harley's "If I have to explain you wouldn't  understand." How true that is.

[Tristan Garrett]

I was infected hours after birth... the house I came home to on day 1 and stayed in for another 5,100 or so was separated from the BN's Chicago line by nothing but a back yard and "the railroad hill", a huge pile of ballast for the grade... what did you think was going to happen? Three train depots in town, 150 trains a day going by the house, Dad working in the city, Sunday afternoon train rides... I was so young back then that I was too short to see out the vestibule-door window in the control car... read such paraphernalia as "Trains" and R&R, picked up the camera around age 10... that's how it started, and it's been all downhill ever since.

As for when I knew, it was probably right around the time that I was hitting the emergency room two or three times a month and spending the rest of the time in perpetual time-out as a direct result of climbing trees so I could wave to the engineers. I'd peg that right around, oh, age 4.

TG

[stillbre]

I don't recall the exact date but it had to be the summer of 1986 when I was only 5 years old.  I was terrified by trains because they were loud and loud noises bothered me.  My great grandfather lived right on the tracks in Science Hill KY.  One afternoon over at his house I was stuck out in the front yard with the house locked when I heard a southbound blowing for the first crossing in Science Hill.  I had no place to run to get away from the noise so had to experience the train blow by the house.  I can still remember it had an SD45 still in Southern paint running long hood forward leading.  I remember thinking after it passed, that wasn't so bad, kinda cool actually.  I was hooked ever since then.  Growing up, every time we went to visit my mom's parents in Somerset I'd beg my grandfather to take the "scenic route" up US25 when visiting his sister in Berea, chasing the CSX Corbin Division.  Of course my "Meca" was going to my great grandfather's house in Scinece Hill, even after he passed away.  My grandmother would take my cousins and I Bill's Resturaunt in Eubank then over to the ice cream stand in Science Hill for dessert and we'd sit by the tracks and watch NS put on a show.  My love of trains and tinkering eventually led to getting into model railroading in a big way.  My first real railfanning excursion was with a friend of my dad's on the CSX A-Line in 1994 followed by a trip to Hamlet.  That fall he managed to get us a cab ride on a CSX coal train down the Clinchfield loops.  Then in 96 when I got my drivers license, I spent half my pay on film and gas chasing trains around Charlotte in my mom's minivan.  Its become almost an obsession since then.  Of course, I still have to go back to Kentucky every year, back to where my love of trains all started.

[butch]

I spent the first eight years of my life watching the L&N coal trains in Harlan County.  That created a lifelong interest in trains that intensified a couple of summers ago when I decided to try to locate and visit all of the railroad tunnels that have been in Kentucky.   And I've made it to 160+ of the 170 that I know about.

ba

[cmherndon]

Those are some great stories from each and every one of you.

I don't know what got me into it.  None of my family worked for the railroad.  Neither one of my parents were really interested in it. However, I've been into trains for as long as I can remember.  I think part of what got me into it was seeing Southern trains 111 and 112 and their mid train radio units back in the mid-80s and early 90s (the latter of the dates would make them NS trains).  In my eyes, those radio units were cool, as were high hood units running long hood forward. Maybe what really got me intrested was the fact that I saw the last days of the Southern Railway.

Another factor in the equation would be the time I spent in Charlottesville, VA every summer with my grandparents.  Their house is roughly a quarter mile from the ex-Southern main between Washington and Atlanta.  From the back porch, I could actually see the trains through the trees, and it always seemed like there was one running.  Also, I have an uncle who lives in Charlottesville, very close to the ex-C&O line between Staunton and Richmond. It wasn't nearly as busy as the Washington District, but it seemed like they always had a Chessie caboose parked where I could see it from my uncle's backyard.

On a related note, Louisville Redbirds games were always fun for me.  I personally love the game of baseball, and have as long as I can remember.  The Louisville District runs parallel to I-65 for a bit, right next to Cardinal Stadium.  I remember taking in many games there and watching the trains go by on the other side of I-65.  That might be the only thing that Louisville Slugger Field doesn't have on Cardinal Stadium.