I remember big steam locomotives pulling commuter trains on the Chicago &
Northwestern line -- this would have been as late as 1955. They were a lot
more fun to watch (and hear) than the ugly green-and-yellow diesel-electrics
that succeeded them. I don't recall a smell from the steam trains; the
diesels stank. I also helped my dad stoke the furnace with coal on cold
nights, and the hot water clanking in the pipes to the radiators. Clinkers
from the furnaces were thrown out into the alley when it snowed, for
traction, and after the snow melted the cinders lay an inch or two thick. I
learned to ride a bike, on balloon tires, skidding around in the loose
cinders all summer. Taught me how to control a drift when I finally got a
motorcycle . . .

Seth
"George Patterson" wrote in message
news:JQY4f.25664$p_.16166@trndny05...
Denny wrote:

Not pleasant at all, and to have 2 or 3 trains an hour go by
belching black all over the wash on the line must have been hell...

My mother grew up not far from the tracks in Waynesville, NC. She told me
that when the whistle blew for crossings a few miles away, everyone rushed
to get the laundry off the lines. Sometimes you didn't make it.

George Patterson
Drink is the curse of the land. It makes you quarrel with your
neighbor.
It makes you shoot at your landlord. And it makes you miss him.