Tehachapi Loop. I corrected the spelling.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDuSfXtqMlE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDuSfXtqMlE)
San Diego Model Railroad Museum in Balboa Park from 2001.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgx0Ewi8QA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ppgx0Ewi8QA)
Riding on the Yosemite Mountain Sugar Pine Railroad just outside of Yosemite National Park in California.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKy4QbzP2Cg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FKy4QbzP2Cg)
Railtown 1897 Jamestown California - Home of the Sierra Railroad and old #3.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9crA-jD10Y0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9crA-jD10Y0)
California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento. See Jupiter, C. P. Huntington, J.W. Bowker, War bonnet Santa Fe diesel A & B. The depot where the Central Pacific started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqyvJVJP1Dg&t=7s (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VqyvJVJP1Dg&t=7s)
Nevada State Railroad Museum in Carson City
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwHAHEyzahU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwHAHEyzahU)
Patee House Museum in St. Joseph Mo. from 1997. Hannibal & St. Joseph 4-4-0 #35, a replica of the first railway mail car, a model train layout, Pony Express stuff, and other railroad items.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI-1LJ1n7pU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AI-1LJ1n7pU)
This is from June, 1997. The Black Hills Central Railroad in Keystone, South Dakota. It's about two hours long. We rode the train one day and the next day we followed it on it's run between Keystone and Hill City.
For the ride, the loco was pulling backwards and I was riding up front so I had an "up close and personal" view of the front of the 2-6-2T. They call it the "1880 Train".
She was blowing out a lot of water. I'm sure they had plenty of water but to a person like myself without an "in depth" knowledge of just how many miles they get to a gallon of water, I wondered if they had enough for the ride. ;D
The day we followed it, I knew the road zig-zagged back and forth across the tracks so I would shoot video when it passed. Then hurry up and drive to next place and shoot video and keep doing that the whole way.
I roamed around the yard quite a bit while we were there, checking out their neat stuff.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU50T5jpURQ (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CU50T5jpURQ)
The "caboose motel" in Two Rivers State Recreation Area just West of Omaha in June, 1997.
It was the first time I had seen a caboose turned into a little apartment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YDaighfWE (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5YDaighfWE)
Union Station in Omaha, Nebraska was turned into a museum. At the time it was Western Heritage Museum. Now, it is called Durham Museum. They have a 4-8-8-4 Big Boy and a DD40AX on display outside.The main lobby area had statues is various poses with sound like they are talking to each other. The have a model railroad layout, too. My camera was messing up so I had to delete some bits of it where the video was jumping and getting some weird lines. Part of it might have been because the tapes are so old and the video and audio is getting messed up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHB68KuogGg (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QHB68KuogGg)
Rails West Museum in Council Bluffs Iowa and the Golden Spike Monument. Council Bluffs was considered the Eastern terminus of the Transcontinental Railroad. There is a model railroad layout inside and rolling stock outside.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtqZDzX4NXM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtqZDzX4NXM)
Here's a compilation of a few different train things in Nebraska from Stuhr Museum, Pioneer Village, Trail & Rails Museum, Dawson County Historical Society, Brady Island Depot, and Union Pacific's Bailey Yard in North Platte.
There is footage at Pioneer Village that shows a lot of model freights cars up high, along the walls. They were all built by one man and built to exact scale.
I had it done last night but I had to go back and change a couple things. I found a little clip from Gering NE. and some track and a plaque from Fort Robinson that I just added to the video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4yAN_id0kA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4yAN_id0kA)
Wow, Terry,
You sure get around!
Thanks for the vids!
the Bach-man
I'm thankful that I had the opportunity in my younger days to see all these places. All these VHS tapes have been sitting in boxes for years. I'm finally converting them to DVD's and uploading them. There is so much neat stuff that it seemed a shame not to share it.
Some of these folks would never get to see it otherwise. Some of these places have web sites but some don't show a whole lot. Fred Lundgren posting all those videos gave me the incentive to do it.
I've been going through them and just pulling out the train stuff and compiling it for now. There's a lot of other stuff like from Yellowstone, Yosemite, Florida, Texas, the Northeast, and a lot of old military forts like Fts. Robinson, Laramie, Apache, Bridger that I'll just put on Youtube.
Here's another one with stuff from Montana, South Dakota, Nebraska, and Wyoming. The model railroad at the Miniature Museum was pretty neat. The one at the end with the Tecumseh's Western history museum was the neatest. The O27 ones were just going around and around but they had so many things going on there. I cut it down and cut a lot out of it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXHM0vWhw8g (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vXHM0vWhw8g)
Colorado trains - Union Pacific's yard and facilities at Grand Junction, Colorado and freight trains traveling across Colorado. I screwed up at first and said Grand Island.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYe_WU0-jRU (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYe_WU0-jRU)
Georgetown Loop Railroad and Mining Park in Silver Plume, Colorado.
Ellis Railroad Museum in Ellis, Kansas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyKygrfWq4k (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyKygrfWq4k)
I really like the green and wine red paint scheme on the BHC tank engine. The 5 chime whistle is melodious and beautiful , just wish the hogger knew how to pull the quill.
Here's a short one from Hannibal, Mo in 1998. Riverboat footage and a train going across the drawbridge.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie5KR-CfWSI (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie5KR-CfWSI)
If you are wondering what quilling the whistle is.....
Prototype: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Z0x7xq7z83M
Model: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=DCh4vktKzU4
I like the chuffing of the loco, but the whistle gets really annoying. I pity the people living around there who have to listen that constantly. Blow your whistle when you have to and be done with it.
Things were different in the South 100 years ago. Engineers were often assigned their own engines but even if not they often would have their own personal whistle, sometimes several. I knew a retired L&N head back in the 80's who had at least 6 whistles, including a couple his father had when he also was an engineer.
These hoggers would swap out whistles with the mood of the day . They were known for personalized styles that were very recognizable. Some of these heads could play melodies on their whistles.
People looked forward to hearing the music these hogheads made on their whistles.
You can't make music with a push button airhorn like you can with a cord pull steam whistle. But in the 80's on the SCL on the Gulf Coast, you could hear engineers that the old L&N hogger had trained trying to do it, back when diesels still had whistle cords for their horns.
I miss the music of the trains.
I wonder which people looked forward to it. Just the other engineers who thought everyone was enjoying it when they really weren't? They were just so caught up in making their whistle sounds to impress other train guys that they didn't think about all the poor folks living a up to a half mile away from the tracks who had to put up with all that racket.
It reminds me of the guys with the big boomer stereos in their cars driving down the street and all you hear is boom boom ba boom boom boom.
I had already posted the "cream of the crop" from my 2001 West trip so this one is little leftover tidbits from that trip. I see where I messed up one place. It should read "Somewhere WEST of the Carlin Tunnel."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq7-jbo1QZ0 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dq7-jbo1QZ0)
Terry, the time I talk of was very long ago and no one is left living to provide an account. But from everything I've read and heard over the years, trains and by association their whistles once occupied a much more elevated status in every day life. People I knew used to talk of the lonesome whistles in the night. Folks talked of whistles that brought dreams of not only travel but escape from isolation and poverty, that promised opportunities somewhere else. In those days railroads ran on time and people could set their watches by a steam whistle on an on-time train. Farmers in fields knew what time it was by whistles. People often knew who the engineer was by the whistle tone, the style, or both. He may have been a neighbor, a friend, or a relative.
The old L&N hogger with the whistles that I knew years ago was far from being a bragadocius loud jerk, but rather one of the most soft spoken and polite southern gentleman I have ever known. He was from the generation for whom railroading was a calling. He truly loved his engines, his whistles, and working for the railroad.
Trains and horns today are a different thing entirely and truly are an annoyance. We live by the old L&N in MS and do get tired of the excessive horn blowing 200 feet from our house. I do believe that the FRA has set minimal allowable horn blowing times at crossings , but I'll let someone knowledgeable address that.
I enjoy your videos, keep them coming.
We live a block away from railroad tracks. The train goes by to supply the power plant a couple miles away. There are 3 crossings real close where they have to blow. I'm glad they are short and sweet and the train only goes by maybe once a month so it's not bad.
We are 200 feet from the CSX main line. There can be as many as 12–15 freight trains a day.
Westbound there are 7 grade crossings one block apart. At 35 mph, the crossing horn signals merge into one long blare. Eastbound there are only two, so we can tell which way it is going. I believe the FRA upped the decibel level lately for safety. There are relatively soft and very well tuned melodic horn clusters on what must be older units. Then there are the much louder and very raucous ones which must be newer.
The loud new ones really do get to me. But some of the smoother older ones, at a distance sound a lot like a steam engine way off. When one of those begins to be faintly audible way off, I put my book down ....... and dream of past glory.
I'm an incurable railroad romantic. I'm old enough to remember the end of the glory days of steam and grand old fashioned railroading.
We've been here for a little over 20 years and it's the first time I've lived anywhere close to tracks so it took a little getting used to hearing the trains.
More videos please, Terry.
I'm working on one now from the Northeast. I have some 2000 stuff from Michigan, New Hampshire, Maine, Boston, and Trainlandz in New Jersey. Then another will be Minnesota and North Dakota from 2002.
It takes along time going through these and pulling out the train stuff. Many times that is only a few seconds and I have to "creep" through the video.
Here's the first part of the Northeast trip. The highlight is the Gorham Railroad Museum in New Hampshire. The rest is just little bits and pieces. The second part will be Northlandz.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqumj1RYlA (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTqumj1RYlA)
This is all Northlandz Model Railroad Museum and Layout in Flemington, New Jersey. It was the biggest model railroad in the country. I don't know if it still holds that title.
Some people dismiss it for a variety of reasons - That the scenery doesn't look realistic. That it's old and showing it's age. That some scenes aren't accurate. I've seen a number of complaints about it over the years in different places.
I can only say that I was impressed. It took a whole lot of work to build something this big. I don't care if everything isn't exactly right. It's his railroad and he built it the way he wanted to build it. I thought it was pretty awesome.
I fixed the glitch.
In the first 17 minutes of the video, we take a ride in the outside train.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GYLQRrj1hM (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GYLQRrj1hM)
This is the last one. I've been to a lot of other places with trains but didn't have a video camera with me.
This one is from July, 2002. We went to South Dakota, North Dakota, Minnesota, and Iowa.
We had my daughter, son-in-law and grand kids follow us to Omaha so they could have a chance to stay in the yellow cabooses with us. When we had stayed there for a couple of days when we went on our Western trip, I thought it would be a neat experience for the grand kids. Then, they headed back home and we headed North.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFI7qdSq2A (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEFI7qdSq2A)
Going to have to watch these this evening. Nearly all my RR visits were pre VCR times. About the last steam ride I went on was the Gettysburg RR in 1992 or 3, behind the ex Mississippian 2-8-0 no. 77, just before their boiler accident.
From the past? Like this?
(http://i94.photobucket.com/albums/l99/rogertra/British%20Railways/rt_W33a-Newport1.jpg)
Cheers
Some of these videos were quite a challenge in trying to figure out where I was when the video was taken. I used Google Earth a lot. I would go through the video and look for the last place I could identify like a landmark or specific site or fast forward until I knew and then back track. Sometimes, just by a Highway sign while going down the road. Then, I'd try to find somewhere on Google Earth that was along the route (as best as I could figure what route I was taking) and use the "Street View" to find the exact place. Things have changed in 20 years and some things aren't there anymore. I was able to find most of where I was.