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any story's with real trains

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romiin:
  Anyone have a story with their experience with real trains.  The house I grew up in had a  train that ran right past the back of our property. It wasn't uncommon to count up to 100 freight cars. The power of the engines  always fascinated me. We use to do the arm pull and the conductor would pull the horn, always a thrill to hear that horn.  Those little prairie towns really depended on the train. We use to lay a penny on the tracks to see how squished they could get, if you could find them after the train went by.  A few  memories with the big trains. Do you have any?  Loco

starfire700:
Our first house in the mid 1970's was near enough to the Milwaukee Rd Bensenville Hump Yard that we would be lulled to sleep at night by the eerie distant squeals of the brake rails.
On my way to work I drove past the Bensenville engine service facility, so saw a lot of locomotives up-close and even some old Hiawatha passenger cars in the storage yard. They were in the UP color scheme at that point and had numbers crossed out with "dispo" written under them.

Terry:
In the mid 1980s, I was in PA for my grandad's funeral. A few of us took the train to NYC from Trenton. There were dozens of GG1s and S2 - (Like the 402 or IVES locos) on sidings just before the tracks dropped down to go under the river.

In the 80s I worked on the roofs of high rise buildings that allowed you to look down on the yard like a train layout. 15 years ago they were still using an SW switcher like a Lionel 622.

romiin:
 Love the first hand stories. I took the family on a ride on this beauty some years back. It was a cool experience.

romiin:
  When you mentioned eerie squealing brakes, that reminded me when the train would stop and start to backup. All the slack in the knuckles would hit and echo through the grain cars one car after another quite a chain of reaction creating a booming echo. The things you remember when somebody mentions something, too funny

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