Modern Vespa

In Italy the trains are all electric traction from overhead lines and are all in closed routes, railway toll booths are few because they have been replaced by bridges. The trains that pass inside the cities are also the fenced paths and when I see videos with free trains I watch it and still today I am fascinated as when as a boy I sometimes went by bicycle to the train station in my city, the station is five kilometers away.

Ah ... what a sight! Only in U.S.A. there is this love for all kinds of machines, how much I envy you.

American steam engines are even found in the U.K......

I agree... Scale trains are fun too.

Yep it's another of my hobby's

i don't mess with the smallies, but occasionally work will take me to the full sized stuff-- mostly the underground ones, unfortunately. but man when we get to grip it and rip it on the big pushers, wow buddy. those bad boys can haul ass.

i'd love to get in with a group that does old steamer and or vintage stuff. just like as conservation and to tinker with nonsense.

Wow, how ugly was that woman?

Some years back, the UPRR moved a steam locomotive to a permanent display in town using heavy movers. Got plenty of pictures as it passed stores, churches, etc. along the way.

And the UPRR usually brings one of their steam engines to display at the College World Series, although not this year, AFAIK. Last time it was the newly refurbished "Big Boy". Found a nice spot outside of town to catch it going by at speed. Very impressive.

Something haunting about a steam whistle as it dopplers into the distance.

My grandfather was a railroad engineer who got his start shoveling coal. He was one of the first people to drive a diesel train engine. Somewhere in the family photographs is a picture of him waving out the window of a diesel engine that has a "Train of Tomorrow" sign on it.

We take Amtrak when we can. We're riding up to Chicago with our son in the fall, to take him to his Sophomore year at Columbia College, Chicago where he is studying film.

It would be nice if we, in the United States, could really get behind railroad travel and develop some high speed trains, as well as run a line across the middle of the country - Amarillo, Oklahoma City, Little Rock, Memphis, Nashville - it's weird everything east/west but the sunset limited gets routed through Chicago.

Of course, it would be icing on the cake to have a train car for carrying scooters!

One of the main things I remember about my grandpa is how much he loved trains. I was still pretty young when he got too ill to keep up with his hobbies, so I didn't really learn a whole lot about them from him. But he had some great photo books, and a ton of model engines and cars and tracks that filled up two large antique storage lockers. I particularly liked the silver passenger cars that lit up on the inside, with tiny silhouettes of people in some of the windows.

I can never recall what scale they were, and they're long since gone (as far as I'm aware). They were definitely larger than HO, quite heavy for me as a 5-year-old, and almost everything was metal. I can remember when we lived in a house that was just a couple hundred feet from multiple track exchanges in east Texas, and he loved it. He would set up a ring or a figure-8 for his models under the dining room table, and my grandma would get on his case about scratching up the floor. To follow the spirit rather than the law of my grandma's wishes, he gave me my own little toy set that Christmas, with a battery-operated engine that could puff smoke, and plastic tracks that couldn't damage the linolium.

As a kid, one of my favourite programmes was Casey Jones and the Cannonball Express

I watch this channel on Pluto TV called ARK, 696, SLOW tv. The "show" is called All Aboard and I'm hooked! Wife doesn't get it and always teases me for watching it. They just stick a camera in the front window and you ride along. I've seen more of Norway than people who live there!

Lynnb,

Unbelievably good model train landscape. If you did all that, you are
an artist. You may have missed your calling.

When I was a kid, 65 years ago, everyone in their basement had a large
sheet of plywood with a electric train going around. We would buy model
houses, train stations, and paint the plywood green to make it look like grass.
Some would take a step further and build hill landscapes out of plaster.

Nothing like your attention to detail. Question, what did you form all those
rock formations out of?

Bob Copeland

I'm a model train girl. Love them but never went as far as Lynnb, but I wanted to. Lynnb, your layout is fantastic!

This one was restored in my home town and still operates in and around Portland, OR. Southern Pacific 4449 may be the most beautiful steam engine of them all. (okay, I'm a bit prejudiced)

Thanks Bob yes I paint the backdrop , make the mountains and build the structures, I've been in the hobby for 30 years, mostly a winter hobby.

Dad worked for the railroad so I was raised around trains.

I can remember being taken to "work" on a Saturday and being left in the care of the yard engine crew while dad caught up on some paperwork in the office i'd just ride along happily sitting in the edge of the cab while they shunted cars. Years earlier when we lived up north he would put my older brothers on the outbound freight engine and zip across town to pick them up at a crossing near our house. He would wait at the crossing and the freight train would pull up at the crossing, drop the boys off and continue on its way. What a fun way for two young guys to get across town! I can't imagine the railroad or the insurance company would put up with those shenanigans these days!

Look up CN engine 6060 on the weeb, he ran that big bugger in regular service before moving into an office job.

SP6051 is my gal. Just dead sexy. Like the girl you see crossing the street that stops you mid step and elicits an audible "woooaaahh"

3100 is my chonky sons. I just love that fatty with all the angles.

3873 looks like a damn tugboat on land, which I admire the audacity of.

Granted given my locale, I'm subjected to more SP but everybody likes a steamer!

Well, maybe a bit prejudiced: my all-time favorite steamer is one of is no longer in existence (thank you, Mister Perleman): the Henry Dreyfus-designed Hudson "J" of the New York Central during the late 1930s through early 50s. A close second to the "J" still exists: Norfolk & Western 611, built by the railroad itself, and which I spent a week chasing around most of Virginia in July of 1983.

Thanks Guzzi Gal builds patience.

We have had this one running on and off for many years. Recently returned to service for sight seeing trips.

It passed through my town once. Heard the whistle from my house and on a whim jumped in the care drove down to the tracks. Got there in time to see this massive beauty. Truly art in motion.

Chris from CLE

I'm a big fan of trains myself.

I wonder if some recessive gene governs the affinity for both trains and PTW's.

I forgot to tell you that my maternal great-grandfather was a steam train operator.

I loved trains from being a small boy and for the last twenty two years have been driving them for my living . I'm a bit of a transport freak I suppose not only do I have a vespa but I fly an ultralight aircraft and have a sailing dinghy .

I take it that you like this topic ...

Indeed I do ....

Put this in full giant screen and attach your face ten inches from it!

...yet..?

Wow, look at all the train'es on this site.

Lynnb, wow what a great work of art. You obviously have been working on that for years. We had a trainscape built by German artisans back in the fifties presented to my parents when we were living there. It was only later in life that I came to appreciate the art they had managed in producing the product. Sadly it slowly managed to disappear over the years.

I too am a train lover and ride them as often as possible. In fact I'm booked on the silver Star July 6th from Florida to North Carolina to go on a scooter ride with my brother and Wleuthold.

My favorite train trip was several years ago. My wife and I put together the poor man's Orient Express and rode local trains from Paris to Istanbul. The further east you went the less glamorous the train was. I would do it again but alas the in section to Istanbul seems to be missing nowadays.

Attila

Ingiara Sfair & Guilherme Tosin Walking Blues/Robert Johnson

I just came back from a scooter ride to the Mississippi Delta. I stay at the Tallahatchie Flats, a collection of old share cropper shacks in a field on the Worthington Plantation.
http://www.tallahatchieflats.com/welcome.html

Robert Johnson is just 1/4 mile down the road. One of the pleasures is setting on the front porch in the early morning, in silence that can only be found in the country and listen to the train off in the far distance. You can hear it approaching for minutes, the whistle blow at a crossing, and the sound fade away as it moves on down the line.

A totally different level of realism from Lynnb's layout, but still a lot of fun!

Old Hornby tinplate, some of it clockwork and dating back to the 1920's.

Train driver from Sweden here. Actually and strangely enough, I've never been that into trains, even if I love my job and think I have the world's greatest office view.













Regards

/ VNS

I admire Sweden a lot ...
The Vespa fits well into the railway landscape, Piaggio has also built a small locomotive and is exhibited in the Piaggio museum.

Great museum. Been there a few times.