Large Scale Central

The "good old days" .... riding the train to school

General Discussion
#1

Hi all,

Chris V’s comment on riding the train back to school, reminded me.

YES, that used to be great. I grew up in Zürich - with a little two year detour here and a ten months detour there - and for a time I took the train to high school. That was more fun than riding the street car and, especially in the winter, not as cold as riding the bike.

This was late 50s / early 60s. The station where I would catch the train going to school was still the starting point for a branch line under steam power - one of only two remaining at that time. The Swiss electrified early - pioneering some very interesting “stuff”.

Not only that, many of the local passenger trains were still headed up by the boxy, siderod powered engines from the 20s. Old coaches with open platforms, wood slat seats. Smelly, even in the no-smoking section of the cars.

Cartoons at the station…? hmmmmmmm I don’t remember any except for those “feed it a coin and watch the action” binocular-type machines.
Didn’t have the time, rail fanning up and down the platforms was more interesting. Too bad I didn’t have a camera back then!

#2

Interesting.

Never did that. Walked a lot. Rode the school bus some.

#3
Tom Ruby said:
Interesting.

Never did that. Walked a lot. Rode the school bus some.


Tom,

I didn’t even know what a school bus was 'til I got to NA!

Walking was the usual mode to get to school, when we lived in the eastern part of Switzerland (2 years) there were some kids in the class who walked 2.5 miles each way. Nah, it wasn’t uphill both ways. :wink:

#4

More on the “good old days”

Back in '52/'53 I spent 10 months in the Engadine to cure my asthma. As luck had it that home is right beside the RhB mainline in Celerina - today it is a college for girls - and in the “one room school” you could sneak a peak out the window to see the trains roll by.

But neater than that was sneaking out of bed late in the evening pull up the roll-shutters on the windows just a crack and watch the sparks flying off the catenary on those cold frosty nights when the last train made its way to St.Moritz.

:wink:

#5

I was Born unto the Age of Amtrack, so we had no local service…My grandmother tells meof several occasions where my Dad ws put on the N&W’s “Cavalier” for the triphome during periods of flooding that wiped out roads…this is the Mid 50’sprolly when the name train had been demoted to a flagstop local…

#6

Not riding to school, but when I was a kid, we used to be allowed to hop on the caboose of the local freight and ride between towns. The weekend crews were pretty cool about it, and it was very fun. Mom always wondered how we got to a town 12 miles away and back so quickly!

#7

My life would have been short!

#8
Tom Ruby said:
My life would have been short!
Oh yes, it was a very good thing that parents didn't know/findout everything.

Close to home was a brickyard and a quarter mile away their extensive clay quarry. Complete with a network of track for their field railway which passed under the SG tracks of an interurban line to get from the factory to the quarry.

Back then the factory would still be running on Saturday morning and once in a while there would be a sidetip car left on a siding. Saturday afternoon was play time.

The quarry was dug into the side of a hill - quite a few hills in Zürich :wink: - and the track had some minor grades to get to the different loading spots. Riding those little sidetips sure was fun!
Just the one time there was a “minor problem”, we forgot to check the alignment of the one turnout and it was headed for the water in the quarry. Oooooooooops! Luckily that was the shallow end and it didn’t disappear into the “abyss”. All three of us got off in time.

Did we get dirty playing in that quarry? Does the bear poop in the woods? :slight_smile: :wink: :smiley:

#9
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
Hi all,

Chris V’s comment on riding the train back to school, reminded me.

YES, that used to be great.


Of course, for me, anyway, it was riding the train AWAY from school at the end of term that was the great part :smiley:
To school, not so much.

#10

Chris, But it was a good start for a thread, besides where would you be today without school :wink: :wink: … oh yeah, now I remember; OTTAWA!! :smiley: :smiley: :smiley:

#11

Way back when, when I was a kid, one of the highlights during the weeks before Christmas was riding the old Pennsy commuter train into center city Philadelphia to browse through all the department stores. Gimbals, Strawbridges, Lit Brothers with their Dickens Christmas Village, and Wanamker’s with it’s huge pipe organ in the middle of the store. Mom would bundle us all up and we’d walk down to the station, get our tickets from the station agent and wait for the local to show up. No steam engines on this line as it was all electrified, but the magic of riding the train into Philly was still there.

We’d go to the end of the line at Penn Station and walk accross 16th St . through City Hall with it’s huge lighted Christmas tree and Santas on every corner and make the trek down Market St and visit all the stores and make up our list for Santa. We’d meet my dad at one of the stores after he got off work and head on over to Horn & Hardart’s for dinner. Then we’d head accross to Wanamaker’s and watch the light and fountain show while the pipe organ played Christmas carols. By the time we headed home we were all tired puppies and usually fell asleep as the train made it’s way slowly back to our stop.

Christmas and trains…what more could a kid ask for…:slight_smile:

#12

I never had to ride the train to school, but I do recall when I was real young the church I attended would have a church outing and picnic at the beach. The railroad would put a special car on the train just for us, take us down to the beach and leave the car. It would be picked up that evening and we would be taken home. It was a couple hour’s ride each way.

And speaking of Christmas, we used to have train layouts in all the department stores and most hardware stores and other stores like the 5 & 10 stores too. Damn, I miss the “good old days”. The kids today are really missing a lot in my opinion.

Warren

#13
Hans-Joerg Mueller said:
Chris, But it was a good start for a thread, besides where would you be today without school ;) ;)
Oddly enough, boarding school may have had something to do with why I am in Ottawa ... having been away from home for eight or nine months of every year from the age of 8-1/2, I felt few qualms about going even farther afield for university (McGill), and never went "home" again except for rare, brief visits. No animosity, quite the contrary; our lives simply took different paths. England had no hold on me, though my mother and siblings are there. But I did do a fair bit of trainspotting during the last years of British mainline steam ... at one time I could tell from a mile or two away at night what locos were pulling out, by the exhaust beat: sharp four beats, ex-GW two-cylinder; softer beats, ex-LMS or BR Standard; six beats, ex-LMS three-cylinder; eight beats, ex-GW four cylinder (Castle; no Kings on that line). Favourite oddity: the little Italian 2-6-0 that had inside cylinders but external valve gear. I only saw one in action; it looked very strange trundling along its branch with the valve motion twirling away but no connecting rods to be seen.