Trains | Pad Patter 8/3

Discussion in 'Chatty Pad' started by weaselwatchr, Aug 3, 2022.

  1. weaselwatchr

    weaselwatchr Viva, Las Vegas!

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    My husband loves trains. I guess they are okay, lol. I get to watch a ton of train videos on You Tube. There is one channel he watches which has a man who rides luxury trains all over the world. I think I would be on board for that. I have been on subway trains in New york, elevated trains in Chicago, as well as trains in Paris and London. One year for our anniversary we stayed overnight on a train. There was a nice dinner as well as a dinner theater mystery show. It was an interesting experience, but the walls in the cabins were super thin and you could here everything that was happening on that train.

    Do you like trains or have someone in the family that enjoys trains? Have you ridden on a train? Any interesting train stories?
     
  2. Memaw2Wm

    Memaw2Wm Well-Known Member

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    I’ve taken my kids and my grandkids to Florida via Amtrak’s auto-train. Journey from DC to NYC with my granddaughter. We celebrated her 7th birthday with a day out at the American Girl Place … theatre, lunch and shopping.
     
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  3. littlekiwi

    littlekiwi I charge by the hour for anything before noon

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    I enjoy trains, I ride on the commuter trains all the time and have done some long distance ones too. Heck, I even live one house back from the main commuter and long distance train track on and off since 1996 so hear and feel every commuter, long distance and freight train most days.
     
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  4. Angela Toucan

    Angela Toucan I keep looking for THAT wardrobe

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    I grew up using trains as we didn't have a car.
    My dad volunteered at a steam railway as a station guard for a few years and was "the fat controller" on the special Thomas the Tank engine days.
    My most memorable train journey was in India from Deli to Nagpur. The train was several hours late at our departure station, apparently that is normal. Someone from the team kept phoning the station for an estimated arrival time so we didn't wait at the packed out station. It was an overnight journey and I think we were twice as many hours late at our destination as we were leaving Deli. The windows were filthy, the only way to see the views that we passed was to stand at the open door at the end of the carriage. The toilet was a small room with a hole in the floor, and there was no sink. Oh - and that was first class accommodation.
     
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  5. ArmyGrl

    ArmyGrl Merlot, Cab, Chard, Reisling - all 4 food groups!

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    I LOVE trains. One thing that was awesome about Korea was their train system - slow trains (inter-city) and fast trains (intra-city). It is wonderful to take a ride...you can read, create, work. I wish the USA was more train oriented. It is so much easier and faster to hop a train than drive. I always imaged going from San Antonio to Houston for a day trip. Or San Antonio to Dallas for a day trip. With fast trains, that is SO POSSIBLE. With driving - NOPE! In Missouri, I could take a day trip out to the wineries and actually do tasting! Can't do that if I'm driving.

    IMG_2963.jpg
     
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  6. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    I haven't been on a train in many years but in my childhood, it was a different story.

    I live in a town that has a major railroad running right through it. We even had a train station where the trains would stop to pick up or leave passengers. My mom and I would get on the passenger train heading south on a Monday morning in August every summer. We would go to Cincinnati and get off at the huge terminal there (it is now called Cincinnati Union Terminal and houses 5 museums and does have Amtrak service). A friend of my parents would pick Mom and I up and we stayed with them the whole week. Dad would drive down on Friday after work and we would come home on Sunday. What is a 2 hour drive today on I-75 was at least 4 hours back then on a 2 lane highway that came through multiple towns. I-75 wasn't built at this time.

    The train station building is still here but no longer used by the public. It is owned by a railroad line and used for storage. My small town is cut right in half because of the railway. There are 9 crossings in town and it is a pain when a train is stopped for any length of time. We either have to go several miles north to find a crossing on a country road or just south of town there is an overpass for a state highway that can get you to the other side. Trains come through town quite often and are always freight trains.

    When I was still working I had to cross the tracks to get to work. Depending on my timing I would see trains both going to work and coming home. And, if I came home for lunch, I could possibly get caught waiting as well. I went to a 24/7 gym that was across from my work for awhile. One time coming home from working out in the evening, I got stopped by a train. I didn't have to wait long since it was near the end of the train. I got curious though because most of the railcars were flatbed with trucks and trailers on them. Also, 4-wheelers, pick-up trucks and automobiles. I also saw several cars with cages on them. Some of the vehicles had a logo on them for Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus. This was March 5, 2007 (I did a blog post on it!) so I was surprised to see the circus this far north at that time, heading north! Hooked on Havanese: Ringling Bros Barnum & Bailey Circus (havadrpepper.blogspot.com)

    I have been on a subway (2002 in NYC) but a dream trip for me is to ride the rails through the Canadian Rockies.
     
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  7. KayTeaPea

    KayTeaPea I carried a watermelon

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    I took the Trans-Siberian Express from Khaborask (in Soviet East Asia-- think 100 miles north of Japan on the Kamchatca Peninsula) allllllllll the way to Moscow in 1995. The whole distance took 8 days, but we took it in two stages, first to Krasnoyarsk, a large city in Siberia on the Yellow River then after 5 weeks in Krasnoyarsk we travelled on to Moscow. We had 3rd class accomidations, with no doors between the aisle and our sleeping berths. We slept with our luggage underneath the beds and had someone staying awake as a night guard each night. The views were lovely and I remember enjoying the dining car for a few meals. Most meals we bought from vendors at the train stations we stopped at often. We bought bread and sausages, then had brought cheese and water with us. We had some canned fruit as well. I remember really wanting a shower but our bathroom was just a toilet/squatty potty and sink. We all were very ready for showers when we got to Krasnoyarsk!
     
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  8. Pachimac

    Pachimac Give me all the cliché Christmas movies

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    My husband is a train geek. He does model railroading as well.
     
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  9. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    A neighbor's 3 year old son (I think he is 3) absolutely loves trains. When the older kids are in school, his mom will take him to "watch the trains". He is obsessed with them. It is cute to watch the videos she posts on FB of him.
     
  10. Karen

    Karen Wiggle it, just a little bit!

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    My Dad has always loved trains and would travel all over to photograph old steam engines. My oldest son also was obsessed with trains too, so that was a fun things those two shared when he was younger. We have a steam museum near us with working trains from full sized to small enough that you sit on top of the car and they have tons of acres so they have many loops of train tracks that you can ride around on. That was always fun to go do.

    I've taken the electric train and the amtrak train many times into Chicago which is about 90 miles away. My son actually just took the amtrak into Chicago today with some friends. My longest train trip was a 24 hour straight trip from Michigan to Colorado and that was pretty cool. The view going up into the mountains was amazing.
     
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  11. gonewiththewind

    gonewiththewind I choose joy.

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    My son Daniel LOVES trains, still to this day. He still has his train sets, from Thomas The Train to his wooden set to his more sophisticated model trains. Jay would take him outside and they would build hills and make ponds and put the tracks over it all. It was so cool. They also built a mountain and had one of his trains run through it. That was in the shed because the pieces were so expensive!

    My first train ride was when I was 15 and we took the Amtrak train up the Eastern coast. We drove to my aunt's house in South Carolina where we boarded the train. We had several stops, but we actually went into Canada and then came back down. I think it was 10-12 days?

    My second train ride was when we were in Missouri and we took a scenic railway tour on a vintage train. We went into the foothills and then turned around and came back. Here's a layout I made about Daniel being in awe of the train.

    [​IMG]
     
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  12. Cath_

    Cath_ In my polka dot dress and apron

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    My great grandpa, Grandfather and my Dad worked for New York Central RR (renamed to Penn, then to Conrail). ( steam engine house in Bellefontaine Ohio)
    I had a lifelong free pass but was never on a train. My Brother's and sisters son did, and Dad loved showing off to them.
    He worked the tracks when started, then did blue prints for bridges across water ways, then supervised the building of them. He retired as the regional bridge something on the line from Chicago to new york.
    Our Sunday drives were up to Chicago to see the bridges rise, and he often got stuck in Syracuse new york, for the snow. I can still see him standing at back door practicing a speech (fancy words, and tone of voice unknown to us), and maybe my love of paper, was he always had tablets, grid paper, in top of his closet
     
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  13. HavaDrPepper

    HavaDrPepper Space. The final frontier

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    I'm just 45 minutes from Bellefontaine.

    My great-grandfather was from Piqua and worked for the B&O RR as the Operator of the A-K Tower at the N.Y.C. Intersection in Wapakoneta. My great-grandmother lived a couple blocks from there and walked past it every day to go to her mother's shop in the downtown area. From what I've been able to find out, the tower was located near the area where 2 different rail lines intersected in town. The one still used today that goes north-south and another that went east-west.
     
  14. Becca Bonneville

    Becca Bonneville Oh my God Becky

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    We loved the trains in Korea too! We were stationed in Pusan (Busan- Camp Hialeah-now Citizen's Park) back in the late 80s and would take the train to Seoul all the time. It was a great experience!

    Other trains for me have mostly been in Chicago (L trains) and to Chicago (Metra) when I lived in the northern part of the state. Now being in southern Illinois we have to drive everywhere around here. We do have an Amtrak station near but haven't used them yet.
     
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  15. Memaw2Wm

    Memaw2Wm Well-Known Member

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    My grandfather had quite the model train set up when I was a kid. I have a huge bin of Brio trains and tracks in my attic that I bought for my granddaughter. When her younger brother came along I bought him Thomas trains and buildings, but continued to buy the Brio tracks b/c I like "matchy-matchy." The exception being a couple of personalized tracks that I bought for Chase while at Thomas events in PA.
     
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  16. gonewiththewind

    gonewiththewind I choose joy.

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    They are so expensive! Jay and I joke that between Daniel's train sets and LEGO sets, his entire college education would be paid for and then some!
     
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  17. tkradtke

    tkradtke Professional Brainstormer

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    I can see the L tracks here in Chicago from our windows. We used to take them all of the time, but really haven't since the pandemic.

    I took my first Amtrak trip in a while in July. My son just started his post college career just outside of Detroit and is living in Royal Oak, right by the train station. I went to help him set up his new apartment.

    Besides that, my daughter and I took Amtrak from Disneyland to San Diego a few years ago and loved that ride... right along the ocean. We took the train through the Chunnel as a family from Paris to London in 2017. And pre-kids, my husband and I took train in Europe (Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden, England... I forget where else).

    I really wish we had a better train system here, I would love to take the train more and have it be more efficient.
     
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  18. Memaw2Wm

    Memaw2Wm Well-Known Member

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    Wooden trains, LEGOs, American Girl dolls (and accessories), and lots and lots of Fisher-Price stuff ... little people, doll house and accessories, great adventure sets ... my attic is full, lol!!!
     
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  19. Scrapping with Liz

    Scrapping with Liz Crafts for days.

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    We rode the bullet train in China. That was fun. A little intense making sure we got on it fast enough.
    When we went to DC I think my kids' favorite part was riding the Metro. We stayed close enough to the Metro so we could just take it everywhere.

    Both of my sons have gone through spurts of loving trains but my older son has moved on to planes (wants to be an aerospace engineer) and my younger son loves cars (wants to be a tow truck driver and mechanic).

    [​IMG]
     
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  20. Cath_

    Cath_ In my polka dot dress and apron

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    what a small world
     

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