Well, TJ, hard to say based on what is meant by 'experience'. But as an old timer, thinking back to college days in Chicago, the CB&Q steam program seemed to always have something happening, usually with 4960 and a different branch or destination every trip. Rode some and chased a lot more for photos.

But probably the most lasting impression was seeing the big CB&Q 5632 before one of its trips. Someone in our group knew 'someone' so at about midnight one Friday I found myself treading cautiously in the Clyde (Cicero, IL) roundhouse, dimly lit, smells of hot oil and wisps of smoke, hissing and clanking sounds, and a magnificent massive gold colored machine. Yes, I saw it painted that way and was close enough to feel the heat radiating from the firebox.

At about that time Dick Jensen was still running trips but they ran south and east of the city so were secondary. Of course all this led to 'jalopy' roadtrips including one jaunt to see the Rio Grande narrow gauge still hauling pipe on the Farmington Branch. And that led to others to see the Mississippian, Mobile and Ohio (old 97), ET&WNC standard gauge steam, Virginia Blue Ridge, Rockton and Rion, BC&G, early Cass, to name a few.

Of course cannot leave out the Duluth and Northeastern and seemingly mile long lines of Great Northern steam, dead, in Superior Wisconsin, Laona & Northern, M&HM, - - -

Hmmm, maybe I should have spent more time hitting the books.

Bob Kutella

Strasburg, ca. 1975? 1976?

Family album still has a photograph of me in front of No. 31 at Groff's with the same bowl haircut TJ had...


1976

AFT, Pentagon, Alexandria Virginia. I was a passionate fan of 4449. I still have my tattered admission ticket.

1980, 1981

Two Chessie Safety Express excursions with 614, Baltimore (Camden)-Martinsburg WVA and return, one via the Old Main Line out and Met/Wash Branches return, the other Met/Wash Branch out and back. Bought goggles in the concession car and rode hanging out the dutch door up Parrs' Spring Ridge grade through Dickerson and Brunswick on the return trip--614 working to raise the dead. Still my defining experience of mainline steam.

Strasburg, mid-60's? When we came home Dad modified my Lionel engine by putting a pointed number board on the front, to look like the Strasburg 31 "choo-choo".

Wilmington & Western, late 60's? All day excursion sponsored by the National Capital Trolley Museum, B&O RDC's from DC, with a direct connection to the W&W. Rained all day.

In the early to mid 70's I became acquainted with Southern 4501 (to Front Royal), the NH&I, Valley Railroad, Steamtown (VT), and others, thanks largely to my ever loving parents who frequently detoured otherwise rational family trips to accommodate their pre-drivers license teenage train-nut son (and often to the chagrin of my younger non-train-nut brother).

Alan Maples

Oh yeah, and first steam, not running ---- Detroit Edison 0-6-0 #203 in the Marysville, Michigan park. She's still there to this day --- except my daughter and son now play on her ;-)

TJ

My very first steam experience would have been back in the mid-60's with Ol' Smokey, the little coal-fired Crown at Knoebel's Grove. I used to love to play on their little static engine as well, the 99.

My first more or less full-size steam experience would have been the Carol Park and Western, riding behind the Durango, around the same time. I also rode behind the Climax there years later.

My first hands-on steam experience was restoring and eventually firing the 91 at the M&H just a few years ago.

You know, you always remember the first time ;) . And it just goes to show you, good things can come to those who wait.

Although I don't have many memories of it, before I was 5 years old in 1957 I must have been affected by the nightly trips to the Birmingham, Michigan depot to pick up my dad (passed away this past Christmas) from the GTW commuter train from Detroit and his job at the J.L. Hudson Co. department store. These were, of course, the last steam passenger trains in America. I recently found a drawing I made at that age, of a locomotive with an Elesco feedwater heater and a Vanderbilt tender. I must have thought all locomotives looked like that. After we left Birmingham, my dad took me back for the well-publicized last steam operation of this service on a Saturday in 1960. His home movie shows GTW 6322 in Brush Street Station.

That interest in trains stayed with me, and I traveled with a cousin to see C&O 377 which operated around 1970 on a tourist line at Toledo. We would also visit the Detroit Edison 0-6-0 in Champaign Park in Allen Park, Michigan, until the day in June 1970 when we found only the frame and firebox and piles of chunks. (This casualty was a twin to T.J's engine in Marysville and the Commonwealth Edison one at IRM.)

That fall I enrolled at Michigan State University, where I found a small group of railfans with designs on the PM 2-8-4 on campus, and things haven't been the same since.

my first ride was the Edaville Railroad in the 1980s.

Later I did East Broad Top in Pennsylvania.

Cumbers & Toltec Seceni RR

Durango & Silverton both directions.

Still need to do a Goose Ride at the CRRM

WW&F 10 cab ride

Maine Narrow Gauge Museum.

Edaville in Diesel and colonial sugar engine

ted miles

Crotch Island, Maine. August 1964. We were taking a trip by boat across Penobscot Bay to sell my grandfathers lobsters and pick up some supplies in Stonington. As we were approaching Crotch Island, my mother shouted, "Look, a train!". One of the Crotch Island quarry's saddletankers was fired up and moving some cars of granite. Mother explained that the granite was going to the Kennedy Memorial at the Arlington National Cemetary. This was surely a unique operation. I know at least one of the engines is now on the mainland (I think there were two engines).

Growing up in Rahway, NJ. The PRR. K-4's including the infamous 1361 on the New York & Long Branch, many cab rides!

First official steam fan trip, the Jersey Central trip Elizabeth, NJ. to Jim Thorpe, PA. Featuring JCL. camelback T-38 774! This was back in 1954.

Ed K.

I would have to guess that my inital exposure to steam (live) would likely have been the narrow gauge trains in Chicago's Brookfield Zoo.
First real exposure (and lasting memories) would be the Flying Scotsman's visit to Chicago, not sure of the exact date, 1970-71 ?
Distinctly remember that train in the downtown C&NW station, this would have been age 10-11.

In the next 5 years or so, got to chase the Southern 4501 in southern Illinois (probably out of St Louis), ride the Durango & Silverton, back in Chicago got to see the Freedom Train, the Royal Hudson visit, the Chessie Stream Specials.

Non-operating steam, had early visits to the National Museum of Transport in St Louis in the late 60's (I remember seeing things I'd only seen in pictures,,, and a lot of mud, things have definitely been improved)
More static steam at Chicago's Museum of Science and Industry, and out at IRM. For some reason, I never managed to be around IRM with operating steam until the mid-1980's. The Acme Gravel 0-6-0 parked in Franklin Park, Ill, is still a favorite spot to visit when driving through the neighborhood.

Since then,, lots' of chasing, particularly Milw 261, the UP engines, all the museum operations in the Midwest and some other places. Quite amazing how much is still out there.

In browsing through the responses in this thread, it is fairly easy to surmise that most respondents are from a generation displaced by 20-30 years of railroad history from mine.

I grew up in the age of steam. I lived beside the Pennsy yards on "B" St. in Washington, DC. It was a parade every day past my bedroom window. At age 5, my family moved to Confluence, Pennsylvania. I had the Western Maryland with it's 2-8-8-2s, Challengers, Consolidations and Decapods in my front yard. Across the valley a short distance was the Baltimore and Ohio's giant EM-1s and other fire breathing, smoke belching behemoths.

But the sights that left the biggest impressions on me were my first diesels, a string of shining black Western Maryland units that roared off into the night, into my dreams and fantasies; and the night my father took me downtown to see the first dieselized Capitol Limited.

I was changed forever by those events. What started as a childhood dream became a reality in August 2000 with my first purchase of a Western Maryland diesel locomotive.

In reflection, our experiences, my first diesel and your first with a steam locomotive, were momentous. Everyone should have an experience like ours...some day.

Like many of us, there are plenty of steam experiences, but these stand out:
1972 or 73: I rode on the Tweetsie RR (behind former ET&WNC #12) around the age of two or three, which is one of my earliest memories.

1975: I saw the North American Rayon Porter fireless 0-4-0 working around Elizabethton, Tennessee. God, what a monster!

1976: 4449 rolling through Tallahassee, Florida with the American Freedom Train. Probably the single coolest thing that ever happened to me as a kid. My Mom took my borhter and me out of school for that chilly morning to see her come in, several hours too late. I'll never forget watching her roll past the old SCL station. I still have the AFT program I begged my parents to get me. But we didn't take a single picture! I actually got thank Doyle McCormack in 2000 for that memory (at the BNSF special in Tacoma) and again saw the 4449 in ATF colors in 2002. I finally got my AFT photo then, 26 years late. I'll be chasing her from Portland this July, finally getting to see her in SP Daylight colors at last.

1981: My Mom asked a TVRM volunteer to give me a cab ride on SRR 630 (also a former ET&WNC engine). To this day, she swears they didn't have pay anything extra for me to do that.

1987: Riding behind N&W 1218 south out of Valdosta, Georgia at night to Jacksonville, Florida, at night, at high speed, leaning out of the crew car. I was freezing and filthy afterward, but it was worth every moment!

2004: After over 20 years of dreaming of visiting the California RR museum, the wife gave me an early birthday present of an airplane ticket to Sacramento. Nothing was running, but I was speechless walking around in there. I'd been dreaming of going there most of my life. It was worth the wait.

For me it was pre-school days in Ventura, California, 1951-54. My father, who was fascinated by railroads without being a "railfan," would take me out to see the Daylight as it rolled through town. I recall some nighttime visits to the depot at train time. And I recall seeing cab-aheads during the aftermath of the Tehachapi earthquake.

Then there were the visits to Disneyland and Knott's Berry Farm.

One year in the mid-60s, I remember visiting Knott's with relatives and finding not only one engine running but the other one hot next to the original enginehouse. Then within a week we were on our family trip to Nebraska. My mother developed the route and it was through Durango and Silverton (but no extra day to ride the train; while father slept in she took me to see the train leave town) and then Montrose, Salida, Leadville to Golden. I was left for a few hours at Colorado RR Museum and they had their C-19 also understeam. Boy, all three of the C-19s under steam in less than two weeks!!

Wow TJ, you are making me really think here. It isn't cause I'm old, but because I was very lucky as a younger man to see lots of NS Steam. So now I must think of my first steam experiences.

Every year my father and I would chase the NS Steam program out of Bellevue, Ohio. It switched off between the N&W 1218, 611 and NKP 765. I just remember being allowed up in the cab of the 611. What a clean cab. I also got to see the cab of the 765. It was a heck of an experience on a young kid and the chase was great, lots of different roads to stop on and many, many miles of pacing. I remember one time the 611 was running the trip and I was told I had to be really good or we wouldn't go. Well...I got in trouble at school and the teacher sent a note home. At first my father said we weren't going but then he changed his mind. We went, but I had to stay in the car. You have no idea how mad I was. I wasn't allowed out once that whole day. I'll never forget that.

I also remember riding the 765 from Orrville to Pittsburg and the 1218 on the Toledo Flyer, the C&O 2765 from Akron to Pitts and many many other trips. At one point we rode behind the 611 when I was very young. I was just at the height that I could stand and hang my head out the window of an open air coach. Well, I stood there all day and fell asleep in that position. My parents still have a picture of me sleeping in the standing position with my head out the window.

I remember the trips the 1218 pulled from the Ohio State Fair. The fair would be in full swing and on the other side of the fence was the 1218 waiting for the trip.

Every summer my father and I would head to Indiana to ride the Little River Railroad 110. I have a special place in my heart for that engine. I wish it was still running.

I also remember when the 3985 came out east as the 676. I was in school so we couldn't get down for the trips but we went down for the move back west. We were in Kentucky and we waited and waited and the engine didn't come by. We decided to head down the line to look for it. I remember being in the family van on a 4 lane highway that paralleled the tracks. My mom was driving. We came over a hill and there was the 3985 coming right at us. My mom, without a second thought, drove over the median and the chase was on.

I have very fond memories of 93 when my family took a vacation to Roanoke to ride the 611 from Roanoke to Glade Springs. It was an awesome trip and my last ride behind the best northern ever built. Later that sumer the 611 pulled a trip from Columbus to Sandusky. I wanted to chase but my dad didn't really want to go. I remember waking up very early and getting dressed. My father came down stairs and asked me if I really wanted to go. Of course I did so he gave in and we went. It was a great chase and I still have the video. We left the engine in Sandusky and not long after the steam program was cancelled. That was the last time I saw the 611 and I will never forget it.

I think thats enough.

Thanks for the great responses everyone --- some great stories here.

What is interesting to me is that there seem to two distinct groups: those that first saw steam in the regular service period, and those who saw them in the preservation era. Whats remarkable is the reactions seem to be the same --- awe, wonder, a bit scared, yet overjoyed at the same time. Also, the ages seems to ring fairly true as well --- somewhere between roughly 4 - 10 years, with most towards the 4 end. Given the wide ranges of "where seen" and "what seen," that's pretty amazing I think.

Kind of makes me wonder if my little guy (now five), who runs around making steam sounds like "sixty-free-wenty-five" will remember his first experiences the same way, or if they will have the same life-long effect that they had on the rest of us.

The next question would be this, then --- what was the catalyst which took you from "WOW" phase to the "interest" phase --- was it a person taking you under their wing, was it, like with Greg, a parent taking you road-tripping? A volunteer group letting you in and showing you the ropes?

TJ Gaffney