My Interest in Railroads - Part 1

I have long been interested in many aspects of railroads and railroading. What is it that I like about them and why? The origins of my interest in railroads goes back to when I was a kid. It must have been about 1964 or so when I was about 7 years old when I got a Lionel trainset for Christmas. It ran in a figure 8 with a single steam locomotive and a set of freight cars. I still have one of the cars – a Sunoco tank car. I don’t know the origin of this trainset but I believe the set was used since the cars were not particularly pristine or even fully functional. I liked it anyway.

A few years later, I found a report that my brother had done for school about railroads. I found this fascinating because everything my older brother did was fascinating by definition. I had to do a lot of things that he did and I was interested in many of the things that he was interested in because, well, he was cool – simple as that. He was (and still is) 12 years older than me. To prepare this report, he acquired numerous booklets and other information directly from the railroads. So, I had to do that as well. I wrote to the railroads, and there were lots of them back then, and asked them for whatever information they could send me. They sent some of the same booklets published by the Association of American Railroads as well as timetables, photographs, and posters - all for free. I still have a lot of this material that dates back to the late 60's.

These are some of the things that sparked my interest in railroads.