Thinking about North Conway made me think about my first steam experiences, things that unknowingly hooked me for life. Listing some of mine, so that other might share theirs.....

Chessie Steam Special --- 1978, I think. Detroit, Michigan area, that I know. Can't remember much --- except that paint scheme, and being REALLY scared at the "noises". I REALLY remember that paint scheme, as I was a "Chessie" generation kid, no doubt about it. That, and buying that snap-together kit that I think Revell put out soon after.....

Greenfield Village -- Spring 1979. I don't remember a lot, other than my dad asking if I could pose with the engineer in the "Torch Lake." I have the shot of me to this day, with bowl haircut and all....

Marquette & Huron Mountain --- Summer of 1980. This was one of my first "vivid" memories, going on my first U.P. trip. I distinctly remember that feeling when I saw 2-8-0 #23 sitting there --- "WOW!". I well, remember the long lines of LS&I locos sitting there, and judging from my fuzzy shots, I think the coaches had to be ex-Erie Stillwells. Who knew that many of those "scrap line" steamers would end up powering steam in Arizona in the not-too-distant future.

Conway Scenic --- Fall 1981 (I think). I remember seeing #47, but I don't think she was running. I just remember that really GREEN engine, which I would later learn was ex-Reader #118. At the point, that was my longest train trip ever, and I remember hanging out that open air car, which looking at the photo looks like it was an ex-outside braced box car.

O.K., what about the rest of you?

TJG

My first steam experience was in 1960, when my Dad took me on a Reading Iron Horse Ramble. As an impressionable 8 year old, I was highly impressed & began a lifelong love of steam.

My first experience with regular service steam had to wait until 1981, when I took a tour to Cuba to visit the sugar mill railways. On to China beginning in 1983 & I'm still traveling.

My first steam experience was a Southern Railway excursion from Alexandria to Strasburg, VA in about 1969(?). The trip was a double-header with S&A 750 and SR 722, in the rain. We stalled in Linden Gap - sanders clogged in the damp weather, what a show!

Wesley

ca. 1973-1975: Didcot Railway Centre, England -- My parents have a photo of me, age 1, sitting on the bufferbeam of 0-4-0T Shannon. I don't remember back quite that far, but I do have some vague recollections of some of the later visits here when I would have been 2 or 3.

1976-1981: Northern Pacific 4-6-0 no. 328 and 4-6-2 no. 2156 -- Does it have to be working steam? My family moved from England to Minnesota when I was 4, and these were the local park engines in nearby Stillwater and Como Zoo, respectively. As a kid whenever anyone asked me what my favorite animal was at the zoo, I would say "the iron horse"! Other early park engine memories included the "3-spot" and DM&IR Yellowstone no. 229 up in Two Harbors, and former Soo Line 0-6-0 no. 346 half-buried in a restaurant in Rochester, MN wearing the fake number 9 and similarly fake cowcatcher and balloon stack (which seemed real enough to me at the time!)

1978?: The Royal Hudson -- When 2860 came to town, she was the biggest working steam engine I had ever seen at that point in my life, but I remember what impressed me most was her musical horn that played the first four notes of what I would later find out was "O Canada".

1981 Northern Pacific 328's return to steam -- This pretty little 10-wheeler had disappeared from the park in Stillwater not long after I had moved to the area. When the restored engine made her debut in 1981, my dad took my sister and I to see her, and he joined the Minnesota Transportation Museum that day. It was the first of many occasions when I would see this engine run, ride behind her, and occasionally even on her, throughout my childhood and teenage years, culminating in a summer spent volunteering as a car host for the museum when I was in high school.

Richard Jenkins

I'm old enough to have vague memories of walking by tall drivers on Reading Pacifics at Pottsville. My first serious steam experiences were the Iron Horse Rambles, which really gave me the bug. Have since volunteered at WK&S, Rail Tours in York, WW&F and WK&S again, along with time in the shop at Steamtown.

Spring 1952, as a 3 year-old. Cab rides on a Great Northern 2-8-0 working the Milaca branch line out of Elk River, MN.

1960-62 5632 and 4960 trips out of Minneapolis
1960-61 Trips behind Missabe Yellowstones out of Duluth

Lots more

That's a tough one. Earliest I can recall is well, Disneyland, being a SoCal native myself. I cannot recall going to Knotts very young, although I probably did.

Not the most exciting entry, but I am also a youngin'.

I remember LIRR G5's pounding through Mineola, in the early 50's, but my real first experience was in 1965. i wrote Ron Ziel a letter after reading his first two books. It turned out he lived fairly near us. He met my father and offered to take me with him and his brother to Steamtown in Vermont. At Steamtown, Ron introduced me to Nelson Blount who took me for a ride in Rahway Valley #15. Not bad for a 15 year old boy's first introduction to live steam.

October 2, 1971.

JAC

I have very vague recollections as a toddler of seeing big black smoky things at RR crossings in Roanoke. Later, although I don't remember the exact chronology, I saw the "General" on it's Civil War Centennial tour, and went to Tweetsie RR and the"Rebel RR" (ancestor of Dollywood) with my parents. My first "solo" trip was at the age of 10 behind 4501 on it's return home from the 1966 NRHS Convention via the N&W. In October of 1971 I got my first cab ride in 750 (in the yard at Monroe, Va.) on the ferry move south after the aforementioned Front Royal trip. All of this led to my mostly volunteer but occasionally paid "career" in rail preservation.

My first experience with steam was 8o some years ago when my mother and I rode back and forth from Minneapolis to New Ulm, Minnesota on the M.&St.L. I remember the open platform wooden coaches pulled by a little 4-4-0. Later we moved to St. Louis and travelled back and forth to Minnesota on the Burlington/Rock Island or sometimes the Alton to Chicago and the Milwaukee to the twin cities. Still later we moved back north to New Ulm and I haunted the MStL station. The men working there took me under their wing and taught me the railroad business. I learned to do almost every job arond there including firing the engine (a 1903 2-6-0, 321). Then we moved to Duluth and I hung out at the Duluth Union Depot & Transfer Co. They had an N.P. 2-6-2. Moved back to St. Louis about 1938 and that was steam heaven.
I rode the first train to use the MacArthur Bridge (then the Free Bridge) and got left in the middle of the darn thing and had to walk back to Union Station.
Worked from the beginning on the Wabash Frisco & Pacific one foot gauge railroad. After the war, I worked 10 years as a switchman on the Frisco in the St. Louis Terminal. Caught the 2nd trick bullring job one day and the yardmaster told me to go back to the east end of the yard and take the engine on the Pacific switcher to the house. It was the 1527 and it turned out that it was the last time a steam engine operated at Lindenwood.
In the early days at the Museum of Transport (I was a volunteer) , I used to catch a ride from Kirkwood down to the Museum on the MoP helper engines. Finished all that up as a member of the crew of the 1522.
What fun!

I lived 50 yards away from the Southern main, about 15 miles out of Alexandria, VA. No better place for a steam show in the mid-seventies. One of my first recollections was the legendary 4449 excursion from Birmingham to Alexandria. My brother and I were in the bathtub, heard the whistle and ran across the yard naked to see the 4449. I also remember seeing 4449 and 2101 parked nose to nose at the Pentagon. My parents took me on my first excursion behind 4501 out of Chattanooga in the mid-seventies, but I was too young to remember-I've only seen pictures. I also recall my father taking us kids on an excursion behind no. 60 at the Black River and Western, and me being so terrified of the whistle that I refused to get on the train.

These experiences made such an impression on me that I got my daughter early-we chased a 1522 excursion out of St. Louis when she was six months old.

1985, on the Tennessee Valley Railroad. My Grandad and I got in the cab of Southern 630 at East Chattanooga, and I about jumped out of the cab when the firedoors opened!

Later that summer I got to ride for a few feet in S&A 750's cab with Mr. Purdie at Zero Mile Post in Atlanta when he backed up to the train after taking water.

I was born in August of 1982, and the town I live in is close to the NS mainline. Anyway, my dad wanted to go see N&W J 611 on it's ignaugural ferry trip home to Roanoke, but my mom would not let him leave the hospital to see it. I guess that was a good decision, but whether it is coincidence or not, the 611 is my favorite locomotive of any type, steam, electric, turbine or diesel to date. To be technical the first steam trip i rode was behind C&O 2716 while I was still in my mother's womb (so i've been told) on a circle trip from Charlotte, NC to Columbia, SC to Spartanburg, SC and back to Charlotte.

The next steam experience I had that i've been told about was an excursion in 1983 behind S&A 750 and Southern FP-7s from Knoxville, Tn to Cumberland Gap, Ky and return. (This past Sunday I went to the SRM in Duluth, where they were celebrating Bill Purdie's 90th birthday and had the opportunity to meet him as well as see 750 again) .Then the Tweetsie RR was the next experience with steam, followed by two excursions in 1984 and 1986 with 611 from Greenville, SC to Atlanta, GA and return and from Atlanta to Chattanooga and return.

The first steam excursion I actually remember however was with excursion behind then-newly restored N&W A 2-6-6-4 1218 at the age of 4 and a half in April of 1987. My dad and me and my mom and sister went to a spot between Duncan and Greer, SC to see her come across the high trestle. My dad said he heard the whistle while it was Greer and thought it was close, but it was farther away than he thought. He couldn't believe how loud the whistle was. We ended up pacing it around Arcadia and I was in the front seat beside him, he had his window rolled down in his AMC Spirit and when it blew it's whistle I jumped into the back floorboard and covered my ears. I'd never been so scared in my life. Later that month or in May we rode an excursion to Toccoa. My dad was working as a carhost so my late grandfather rode along to chaperone me. Anyway during the layover in Toccoa, my dad took me inside the train station, while 1218 turned on the wye. We walked out, 1218 was returning with whistle wailing, once again I was scared. I have grown to love 1218, and like the sound of the hooter whistle, but still think whoever designed it, went overboard on the loudness.

But to conclude, my fondest steam memory was when I was 10 and rode behind 611 from Charlotte to Asheville and return via Saluda Grade. I got to ride the first coach, N&W 531 (about car 15 or so in the train) behind her up the grade when she stalled. I was upset when the NS steam program was cancelled, but I have been to Roanoke once to see her and 1218 entombed in the Virginia Museum of Transportation, crossing my fingers that there may ever be a day either or both shall operate again.

I was in college in Spokane, WA in 1975 when I read in the paper about the "American Freedom Train" coming through town for the Bicentennial celebration of 1976.
As I recall, I skipped class to head downtown and stand on the platform for a long time, not sure what I would see. I had never seen a locomotive in steam and wasn't sure what to expect. I still remember hearing the whistle for the first time. Then in a little I finally caught sight of the 4449 coming into view. I had never experienced anything like it. We were able to walk right up to it trackside then. I couldn't believe the size and "life" of the machine. I was amazed. . . and hooked for life.
Six years later, when in law school in Salem, Oregon, I walked out of the law school one day and heard that same unmistakeable whistle I'd heard 5 years earlier. I ran all the way across campus to the SP main along 12th Street and arrived just in time to see that same magnificent beast, now in Daylight colors and not the red, white, and blue, headed south to California. Although it's been 24 years ago, I can still see it in my mind.