Any Railfans here?

[PudgieDParrot]

Hello. I am wondering if there is anyone besides me who are railroad buffs---colloquially known as "railfans" or "foamers." Yes, there are still people who worship this industry that disappeared off the radar screen of American culture several decades ago. We count cars in freight trains, support Amtrak and respect big preserved mainline steam locomotives, like the Union Pacific #844 and the Southern Pacific #4449, as if they were pop stars. On the bright side, being a railfan meant that all the "Super Chief" references in Golden-Age cartoons were comprehensible to me better that to anyone else.

As for me, I go to school at The Art Institute of Seattle, adjacent to the Burlington Northern Santa Fe mainline north of King Street Station (and the currently inactive waterfront streetcar line), and always stop to watch the trains rumble by.

Although I am pursuing a career in animation, I will always have a place for railroading as a hobby. Just like the late Ward Kimball at the Disney studio, I find myself working at an animation studio, and always trainspotting on my time off. I even had dreams of, once a year when I get time off of work, volunteering as an engineer or fireman (the engineer's assistant, who, on a steam engine, feeds the fire and fills the boiler with water) in the cab of a big preserved steam engine.

[sumnernor]

I would say that I am a railroad buf. I live here in Germany and use the trains all the time. I especially like travailing on the trains in Switzerland. I could give you all sorts of suggestions on That. There is a train that goes from Munich to Nurnberg in about 65 minutes reaching a speed of circa 300 km/hour. IF you have a DVD player that can read PAL - I can recommend a number of DVDs in which the camera in drivers compartment. The best train was the train between Zermatt (Matterhorn) and St. Moritz and is called "The Glacier Express. Because Swiss railways built a tunnel for year round operation, then stopped going by the Rhone Gletscher/Furka via Gletsch. There is a private group that is slowly restoring that route. Another route is from Oslo and Bergin in Norway is very pretty but Zermatt - st Moritz via Gletch beats that.

A link to wet your appetite:

http://www.furka-bergstrecke.ch/eng/

The following link while in German has videos

http://www.furka-bergstrecke.ch/ger/...ideo/index.htm

Also try google search "train Furka"

I have also a DVD with german/english about the "Bergstrecke". There is also a very good DVD about 90 minutes of the Glacier Express. There is a dutch company that has a number of (mostly wide screen) of trains in Switerland which includes Gornergrat (10,000 feet) to Zermatt- Brig- Andermatt - Chur - St. Moritz etc etc. The cog train from Gornergrat to Zermatt is why I am a big Zermatt fan

[wiley207]

I'm a railfan myself, too. Where I live, we have rather active railroad tracks running through our city. Most of the trains we get are MBTA commuter rail trains (they're usually double-decker passenger cars powered by F40PH diesel locomotives), as well as maybe a couple of CSX freight trains a day.

One thing I noticed, the stock sound effect Treg Brown usually used for diesel/electric trains on the old Looney Tunes cartoons (like on "Hook, Line and Stinker" or "Bill of Hare" or "Now Hear This") sounds like a recording of an old Pennsylvanian Railroad GG1 electric locomotive:

I saw a video of one of these on YouTube, and it had the exact same horn as the trains in the old WB cartoons did, even the engine part sounded identical!

I've also submitted pics and info of railway crossings in the nearby areas to this site...

www.rxrsignals.net

(They are in the Massachusetts section.)