I’m putting together a HO train set for my Grandson for Christmas. I purchased a Spectrum Power pack, and several cars at the Granite City Train Show down in St. Cloud Minnesota. I also bought an Athearn Wide Vision Caboose kit to put together for him. Then I bought an Athearn GP 40-2 kit from Irek’s Trains on Ebay for $20.00. I’d built several Athearn Diesels when I started my layout back in the late 80s and early 90s and it brought back fond memories of the enjoyment I had building locomotives! These kits were really pretty simple to build: glue on several detail parts and install and paint the hand rails. I believe most of these kits sold for around $20-$30.00, new.
I remember being down at Hub Hobby in Richfield MN and watching a guy spend about an hour looking in the display case full of Athearn Diesels and finally selecting one and knowing how much fun he was going to have building his selection!
I know my Grandson will enjoy his set as he is a train nut like his grampa. Train sets and Chistmas go together, don’t you think?
When my oldest grandson was 10 he wanted a Athearn GP40-2 so bad and that’s what I got him—with a twist…The engine was completely disassembled and the parts placed in separate sandwich bags.[:O] I checked in on him to insure he was building it correctly-just like my dad did me when he bought me a Penn-Line H9 2-8-0 when I was 10…
Now 12 years later he still thanks me for doing that so he could learn how to assemble or disassemble a locomotive…
Alas…While he still has that GP40-2 he has moved on to RTR engines from Athearn(Genesis and few RTR)Atlas,Life Like P2K and Walthers P2K line,high detailed cars and DCC…
I felt, for an 10 year old, assembling a locomotive would be to much. He lives out in the middle of South Dakota, I’m in central Minnesota maybe 500 miles apart, so I can’t help him if he gets stuck. I don’t know if he has ever assembled any models before. However, a freight car kit or two is not beyond his capabilities. He needs to learn to walk before he can run.
Everyone has their situations to sort through and I feel I have done the right thing for my situation.
From the time I was a toddler up, my father set a large Christmas Garden for Christmas. It consisted of two 5x9 platforms, two loops of tru-scale ready track, a Aristo trolley bus, lighted structures, etc.
Fairly large and elaberate for a Christmas garden, At age 10 we had moved into a house with a basement, so once set up the layout stayed up. That one had multi level track, plaster mountains, hidden staging for extra trains, etc. By age twelve it was mine and I was heavy into modeling,
By Age 13 I was building Mantua steam loco kits, craftsman freight cars like Silver Streak, and craftsman buildings like Campbell. At age 14 I started working in a local hobby shop and most of the train repairs there.
That layout was put up in 1967 - I’ve been active in this hobby in some way ever since then.
Your childhood and mine arn’t all that dissimilar, excepting I started building models in the mid 1950s. With the extra experience I have over you, comes a price, I probably am significantly older than you are.
Still we are from different times, we come from a time when there was more “Modeling” in model railroading!
Two of my Athearn Blue-Box diesels from around 1960 are still in service on my railroad. Unfortunately, they no longer run by themselves, but I’ve gutted them, added Kadees and details, weathered the shells, added sound-only decoders and lights and I now run them as “honorary” engines. (Nothing nearly as ancient as me should be called a “dummy.”) I love watching these old friends from my childhood cruising around my layout.
I was born in 1957, making me 55 years old currently. Most of my modeling friends are my age or older, only a few are a little younger than me, in their 40’s.
That makes a world of a difference since you wasn’t nearby to offer a guiding hand.
However…
He studied the plans and had a go at it and needed to ask three questions during the assembly but,I expected as much since he watched me take several BB engines apart for cleaning…
hahaha! it’s the other way around in my case, I have model trains that I like showing my grandpa I told him that if he wanted I’d build him a small 4x8 HO scale Great northern layout. (the GN’s his favorite railroad, when he was a logger and worked for the WSDOT on stevens pass he saw lots of GN trains pre and post merger.)
When I built my first layout, in the 80s, I wanted a good quality, nice running locomotive. Almost ALL of my fleet was Blue Box locos. I still have a couple of them; GP40-2s. They needed some minor work to get them back into running order. My Blue Box locomotives remind me of when my son (who is 30 now) was a young boy, out in the garage running them around the layout. Now, my middle granddaughter has the model railroad bug. [:)]
I have a herd of Athearn BB locomotives on the BRVRR. F7s, PAs, GPS and even FP45s. Many are ten years old or more and most are now equipped with sound.
Christmas time means we bring out the Lionel Polar Express and a larger than standard loop of track. Both of my grandsons, 16 and 7 years old, can’t get enough running time. It brings back a lot of memories for me too. My first Christmas train was a Marxx Baltimore and Ohio F3, I think, freight set with a simple loop of track. I can still remember the excitement of opening that big box.