Our love affair with trains.

My father was trainmaster for a RR and he put in a sealed bid on an excessed station building in rural Pa. He won the building, it was a doug fir framed and painted oak interior and pattern cut shingle siding. AND it included a bunch of furniture and a flatbed IH deisel truck and a whole bunch of specialized RR "Yard tools".
A bunch of the local family and friends went out to the building one day and carefully loosened a lot of the framing and took the interior panelling and wainscotting. The next day My father and I went out early and he flagged down the only train using that track in the AM. It was a loooong coal carrier.

The train stopped and we had a series of web belts clipped together that we wrapped about the building . Hooked up to the catcher and ha the train "Back up" a few feet. This pulled the building down very gently with very few broken boards.

We unhooked the train and all the guys in the diesel engine were laughing s they went on their way.
Took us less than 3 days to load and haul the wood back home (we had the main beams numbered corresponding to a drawing I made ). My dad rebuilt it while I was in my first yr in college and he did a really great job of restoration, right down to the radio antenna that powered a 2m band radio that the original stationmaster had installed .

With the way he originally restored and painted it, I think my My father kept became one of the first guys to have a "Man cave" Besides a workshop inside, he created a small lounge area room with a fridge , 3 stuffed chairs (I dont know where he got those but he never was above a great deal), and there was the center of it all , a working wood and coal caboose stove (there is a rim along the top of a caboose stove so the coffee wont spill on turns or stops.
In the rest room (theres only 1) some hobo carved his name "NEW YORK BIKEY-1928" Dad kept that carving in place, it was an artifact. Pop got into a bit of trouble, some neighbor ratted him out to the DER and he hadda get a sewage permit and put in a tile field , and before he hooked up to sewers when they came through, he and my mom moved to a retirement village which were becoming popular in the late 70's,

Every couple of yars Id go by my folks old home to see whether the old station was still standing as a "man cave". It retained all that gingerbread on the overhangs and a cupola that was unique to the RR. The original exterior RR color, was a logo greenish "OD" and black on trim, and an interior was a weird "flesh color and cocoa brown " . One family later, they decided to upgrade the building into a Victorian kids playhouse with an "enclosed porch " and they had it painted bright pink and white with a purplish trim on the gingerbread . It lost all its coolness so I wont be going back to see how it deteriorates.(Ive inherited all the RR yard tools and I have them hanging on the walls of my shop along with an old coupla kids sleds and a bigass hay cradle.
That was one of the stories of my youth and most people I tell it to say Im lying, but I always wished I had a camera to record the whole thing. I was probably 17 when we did it andI was slowly beginning to realize that my old man really wasnt a big dummy.

Our station house was more like the one you posted except for a center Dormer where the entrance door(at the bumpout you show on the "park building"), and of course there was that big cupola . The chimney was pretty much the same except it was at one end and not in the center of the roof.
The gingerbread was maybe a skoshe more fruity looking but it had about the same "Victorian look". The roof was where there was a problem. He wound up spending more for the roof ( He made it an erzats rolled seam metal roof) than he did for the building, contents, and truck. (I think his winning bid was under 100 bucks) , while the roof cost almost 5 grand at the time (1968).
Somthing really neat and comfortable in these old station buildings. When My first wife left me I was in a real dangerous funk for several months and I recall I used to drive to my folks place on a few weekends and just go to the station house and sit in the chair, lite up a stove , and read and mope.

Norfolk and Western no 917 sat in a dump yrd in Roanoke for about 30 years. In 2008 qe were doing some site work to see whether a client would want to buy the land for a wash area for ores. When the place was finally bought, they tripped that ratty old yard bird up to Ohio where the gathered up the old Baldwin plans and restored the damn thing. This is a pic of the old wreck. I have one of the restoration but I cant post it.

Some of my happiest childhood memories were of waling down to the depot to spend some time with my grandfather. He worked from 4:00 am until noon, and my earliest clear memory is of him standing in the bathroom just before 4:00, shaving with his straight razor, before going to work. He would key in on the telegraph, relay any messages, and, after the milk trains had passed through the yard, walk down the ally to the house, where my grandmother had his breakfast, hot for him. My sister and I would carry a light lunch to him in late morning. As a small boy, I would spend hours there. He taught me to read in the summer before my fourth birthday--of course, I wasn't much of a reader then. Sitting in the depot, though, I could read, and ask him any question. There were magazines there, too--Look and Life, Collier's and The Readers Digest. Some of them were rather, old, from the 1940s--not that I understood that at the time, or would have cared if I had. So many quiet, happy hours. That was where he first handed me The Outline of History. If I asked a question he could not answer, he'd write it down. A day or a few days later, he'd pull out a slip of paper with the answer. Several years ago, when I learned the depot had been preserved, I was gratified--even though I will very likely never see it again.

That's just what the old coal-burners I saw as boy looked like.

HA, heres the pic of old 917 after a clean and rinse and minor rebuild of ngine, boiler rods, cockpit, gauges, etc etc etc.

I always thought the old 2-8-0s were rather small, but judging by the figure standing next to it it's immense. The wheels look like they're 8 feet in diameter, unless that's some kind of Illusion.

But this 917 doesn't look like the same engine, the old rusted hulk that you posted earlier.

the third train station in my hometown
it's now an information booth

I loved the first one - which closed in 1974. I've got great memories of travelling through it.

http://www.canada-rail.com/ontario/k/kingston.html#.WphK3KO5vIU

Here's another view of the same people I found. A real beauty.

Nice slideshow, by the way.

Trains plowing snow in action.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=eKL9_TaioE4

I can't see any data on the web about the Norfolk and Western W class 2-8-0s, but the similar Southern Railway H4 2-8-0s (also by Baldwin) had 56 inch drivers.

Thy rebuilt most of it and replaced the piston driver box up front. When I sw the hulk, a lot of the steam rods were eaten through as were the driver boxes .
The picture is of a little kid > I thought the same . Remember it was mostly a yard bird or a pusher. The new coal tnder looks like its homemade too. The bell hs been attached

Here's a depot in Carlsbad, California that looks like a Japanese Temple.

The Baldwin 2-8-0 was always my favorite. I always wanted a brass model of one, but now they're too expensive.

I don't know why, but when you start watching this you can't stop until the end.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=qtc__nxtQSc

fascinating. Somebody has waay too much free time to give to those of us with waay waay waay too much free time .

Challenger 4-6-6-4 steam locomotive pulls 143 Freight cars in 2008.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XhgHrDbN4EU

Union Pacific . . . somebody has to haul all that sh*t through the Rockies, which ain't no little hills.

The Toledo and Ohio Central Station in Columbus, Ohio (no longer in service as a depot--I worked in the office at the bottom of the tower on the left):

Great thread, Boss--thank you.