any story's with real trains

[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

[starfire700]

That's right, we would also hear the "bumps" as the cars reached their destination on the make-up tracks. When it was cloudy or foggy the sound would come and go, was a pleasant memory.
Responding to Terry's story, one of the first times we went to York, about 1980, there were no rooms to be had in York, so we had to stay in Lancaster. Our room at the motel overlooked the distant tracks and GG-1's were still in service, so were easy to spot.

[romiin]

 We lived a mile out of town.  I use to walk the tracks to town quite often.  I remember on time one of those little service cars gave me a lift.  I will never forget he had a box in the back,  that had these caps in it.  They looked like ravioli with wire hooks on them.  You guys probably know what the actual name is for them.  The service guy said they strap them to the track about a mile up track from were they were working.  The train would run over them,  and believe it or not they make a big enough bang to hear over the engine noise to warn the train to stop. 

[CNJRR]

In North America they were called Torpedo's.
Elsewhere they used the name Detonator's.