I grew up near the Boston and Maine Railroad for the first 5 years of my life. Their small Bradford (Haverhill) yard served the former Georgetown branch, was located across the street from our apartment, and was a mere shadow of its former self, and those remains only went a couple of miles to Haverhill Paperboard. Back then, there was enough traffic to require a switcher stationed at the yard and there were numerous passenger and freight trains on the mainline. My dad used to bring me over the fence to watch the trains in the valley below and one day I got a cab ride on the switcher.
In addition to watching the switching and through trains, I used take to Budd-liners to Boston from the nearby Bradford Depot. Once in Boston, we took the PCC trolleys and subways to various locations. I used to go to doctor's appointments down at the Children's Hospital which meant I got to ride the trolley both underground and above ground to Longwood Ave. I remember standing out at the Longwood Ave. stop and freezing in the winter as we waited for the trolley to come along. If we went into Cambridge to visit my grandparents, this was a different route. We would take the trolley from North Station over to Park Street where we took the Harvard subway, today's Red line. That line rises up and over the Charles River bridge and then down under ground again at Kendall Square. We would take that one more stop then walk to my grandparent's apartment. There were other trips such as one out to Forest Hills to visit family friends. We took the trolley from Lechmere all the to Forest Hills then took a bus. I was quite small, but I remember that clearly. Forest Hills is was also connected to the Boston Elevated and that was another trip at another time.
The coolest thing, though was seeing foreign power. During the late summer, there were long freights heading both north and south that were used in the potato season. These trains were long consists with locomotives from New Haven, Maine Central, B&M, and even the Pennsylvania. Sadly, this service ended in the 1970s when Penn Central came along and the potato industry switched to trucks due to the PCs unreliable service. During this time, right up in the late 1970s, I took trips to New York City and out to Long Island to visit my dad's relatives. Part of the trip was on the New England Thruway, or I-95 today, which parallels the New Haven mainline. Seeing the cool electric trains racing next to the highway from New Haven south, was the biggest highlight of my trip to New York, not counting my trips on the NYC EL. The New Haven back then was a busy multi-track mainline with numerous commuter trains, through expresses, and lots of freight activity all under wires.
It was these experiences, that got me hooked on trains and have been forever a strong hobby and passion of mine. It's because of these experiences, that I enjoy researching railroad lines and recreating them in Trainz. If it wasn't for Trainz, that would be absolutely impossible to do I think. My current project is the New York and Greenwood Lake with help of a friend of mine. His grandfather worked for the Erie, which owned the line, up until its demise in the mid-1920s when the Monksville Dam obliterated the mainline as it flooded the Wanaque Valley. We were talking about other things and I mentioned to him my interest in trains... The rest is history. He's now providing photos, and with the help of TransDEM, I've been able to reconstruct the line. Now we're working on finding assets that will work, as well as working out details on some locations that are impossible figure out due to "progress".