Trains are life for avid 'railfans'

[Sequoia]

(I know we have a few train fans at DU. I used to love to hear them in the distance at night, especially with rain and crickets on the side. Yesterday I overheard someone say they are going to start running freight trains on our tracks again!)

FOLKSTON, Georgia (CNN) -- Rain or shine, 80-year-old Cookie Williams plops himself on the wooden viewing platform perched over double train tracks.


Cookie Williams, 80, watches a CSX freight train chug by on a typical Tuesday afternoon.
A scanner, listening for oncoming train signals, crackles in the background as it picks up some conductor chatter. He waits some more.

"A lot of people in this town thought I was on the kooky side," said Williams, who is retired from the paper and pulp industry. "But I love it. I've loved these trains ever since I was a kid."

Folkston, Georgia, where Williams lives, is one of many train hot spots nationwide. Here, the blasting train noises are jokingly called "Folkston music." With up to 60 trains crawling loudly through the quaint town each day, it's become an attraction for fans eager to collect train images and sounds.

http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/05/08/railfan.train.watching/index.html?iref=t2test_travelfri

[redqueen]

1. Heh.

I remember seeing an ad for a video of trains. I think it was called "Trains! Trains! Trains!" or something. I thought for sure this must be a joke... but when I posted here about it people told me that no, there actually is a market for such a thing.

I wonder if they have Planes! Planes! Planes! videos too... or Trucks! Trucks! Trucks!... or Boats! Boats! Boats!

It's a funny old world it is.

[OmahaBlueDog]

2. Sure

Most of it is aimed at kids, of course

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/6303026451/teacisaworkofhea

[redqueen]

3. Well no ...

this was aired late at night during adult swim I think.

And it's not cartoony at all. I tried to find the commercial on youtube but failed. :(

[RetroLounge]

6. Trains are NO joke...

just saying...



:hi:

RL

[redqueen]

8. Nice...

did you build that?

I'm not much for looking at trains... but I absolutely adore the sound. I live close enough and in a quiet enough town that I can hear the wheels even sometimes, as they approach. It's lovely. :)

[RetroLounge]

9. Years ago I helped found a club...

We built a huge portable layout we set up at all the shows in the area.

Loved the looks of wonder on the kids faces.



RL

[3.14158675309]

12. I did the same thing (found a train club: Twin Cities LEGO Train Club) with my son

although the train layout is built entirely out of LEGO bricks:






Kids loved it. :) :hi:

[RetroLounge]

13. That's Amazing!

:hi:

RL

[3.14158675309]

14. Thanks! We are considering bringing it to Milwaukee for the NMRA's 50th Anniversary!

Now that my son is in college now, our show days are essentially over.

[RetroLounge]

20. Ever been to Trainfest in Milwaukee?

RL

[3.14158675309]

21. No, but we have been invited in the past. We have shown at the NMRA National Conventions in

St. Paul, Cincinnati, Philadelphia, and Detroit. Missed it last year in Cali. Not going this year in Hartford. Thinking seriously about Milwaukee in Summer of '10.

We have shown many times in the past at an annual train show in LaCrosse, WI.

[madinmaryland]

15. That's really cool!

:wow:

I could spend hours (or would it be days) with that!!

:thumbsup:

[3.14158675309]

16. Thanks! My son has animated portions of it, too. My favorite is his dancing gopher

on the golf course. He buried a circuit board in the LEGO with a cut of "I'm Alright" to play when he hits a button! :rofl:

[Zomby Woof]

24. WANT

:thumbsup:

[OmahaBlueDog]

4. If you like trains, I can think of several places you'd enjoy

http://www.borail.org/

The B & O Museum in Baltimore is a great place to see trains, ride a train, and learn about railroad history.


http://www.uprr.com/aboutup/history/museum/index.shtml

The UP Museum is an old Carnegie Library in Council Bluffs, IA. It's not as spectacular as the B & O, but it's pretty interesting. If you are in the Omaha area anyway, check out the Durham Museum (http://www.durhammuseum.org/), which is housed in the old UP station and has passenger rail cars and a pretty nice model railroad on display.


OK, you are a railroad geek, and you are travelling from Omaha to Denver -- exit at North Platte and check out the Golden Spike Tower (http://www.goldenspiketower.com/_new/). This was built fairly recently. The admission is steep for what it is, but the tower overlooks the Union Pacific's Bailey Yards -- one of the largest rail yards in the world. One can sit atop the tower, watch trains, watch cars being rolled down hill onto sidings to form new trains, see trains being fueled, etc.

...and to all the people I ticked off with this post: http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=105&topic_id=8754430&mesg_id=8754486 ...I never said that I did not have my own geeky, quirky money and time wasting obsessions, too. They just don't involve conventions or costuming (no, I don't dress as an engineer)

[blueknight]

5. i guess they are nice from afar

but if you had to sit on those crappy,hot, smelly engines 12 or 16 hours a day, you would of course, have a different perspective

[OmahaBlueDog]

10. One of my neighbors does that

He runs UP engies to & from Omaha and coal fields in Wyoming

[Sequoia]

7. Ha, ha...

Now how'd you know I was a Star Trek and Dark Shawdows fan !!! Off I go to the link! There's a train museum in Salisbury, NC too that I visted. That's train grill in front was giaganitc.

[hellbound-liberal]

11. Here is the world's most AWESOME model train set in Hamburg, Germany

It was posted here a few weeks ago. It really is awesome!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PN_oDdGmKyA

[SeattleGirl]

17. Wow! That IS awesome!!

Thanks for posting that.

[XemaSab]

19. Too cool!

Is that couple doing what I think they're doing? :o

[kentauros]

18. I like trains, but more from a technological point of view

than from living next to a double pair of freight tracks on the other side of the power r.o.w. (about 200-300 meters away) for the past ten years. Luckily, in the last year or so, the road crossing was made a "quiet zone" though there are still some engineers that never seemed to have gotten that memo. There's nothing like being startled awake at 4ayem when you have to get up at 6am due to a blast of a train horn a dozen or more times

But, looking at and reading about weird high-speed passenger/freight rail experiments by the Germans, Japanese and others is really cool! :D

[Tuesday Afternoon]

22. Love Trains

Iron Horses

[Starbucks Anarchist]

23. Ever see "The Station Agent"?

It's about a dwarf who works at a train store (in the beginning of the movie), and in one scene set there, there's a viewing room where trainfans watch old footage of trains with running commentary.

[Wapsie B]

25. Train-watching is a love of mine.

I don't get to do it often enough. When I do find a good place to see the trains go by it's like I'm drawn there. Something about the sounds, sights, the rumbling of the earth beneath you as the train roars by just gets to me.

[virginia mountainman]

26. Nice to see some railfans on here,

I thought I might be the only one...

[Ptah]

27. Not quite a railfan, more like a steam fan.

But that's just me.

I love large machines!

:thumbsup:

[lizerdbits]

28. I miss my apartment that was 1/4 mile from some tracks

Now I can only hear it in the distance if the windows are open. At least I'll be going from DC to MT by train in July.