When I was ten years old, I found an old American Flyer train set in my Grandpa’s basement. That was my first exposure to model trains. Been hooked ever since.
I come from a Railroad family and I first started with model railroads when my dad bought me a Lionel set in the 50’s. Once in my 20’s I started buying HO and many family members bought Model railroad things for me for each birthday. I eventually took down all the train sets due to a son with some problems who would destroy my things. I never got rid of any of the model railroad things and now that all the kids are gone I decided it is time to set everything back up and expand on it. It is a good way to keep me out of trouble during the winter months and a good way to keep me in the cool basement during the summer months.
My grandfather started his railroading career with a brief stint on the Pere Marquette in southern Ontario prior to the first world war, did a few more years on the Canadian Northern prior to its being rolled into Canadian National, then went to CP where he spent the balance of his career in western Canada - primarily out of Winnipeg. When he was conducting on the Canadian between Winnipeg and Brandon, my mother and I would go along for the ride 3 or 4 times a year. This was in the late 50s and early 60s. I spent most of those trips in the dome cars. I deeply regret that I have only limited memories of cab visits in the F units of those trains.
For Christmas 1964, I received a Tyco HO train set in CP maroon and grey. Right after Christmas, I discovered the January 1965 MR, and the hook was set. Changed to N in 1970, and have been there ever since. While my activity level has been up and down over the years, my interest has never waned, and I have purchased every copy of MR since that first one almost 40 years ago. Given that I also purchase RMC, Trains, N Scale, N Scale Railroading, all of the Kalmbach books, all of the special issues such as GMR, MRP, etc, I sometimes think my actual hobby is reading about model railroading!
David
When I found out I could get a DCC system for less than $200. [:p]
[^]
-
crashing model airplanes was becoming too expensive - I needed an inside job during recuperation times
-
trains are the best
[#welcome] pebdm
I liked trains.
That is a very hard question to answer. I can’t even remember.
In Lansing, Mich., there were tracks that ran next to the back yard. My parents say that before I could walk I would scoot to the back storm door and prop myself up on it to watch the trains go by for hours. Naturally, my favorite toys have been trains ever since.
I was either 5 or 6 when the Chessie Safety Express, featuring C&O #618, roared past the grade crossing which was about 1/4 mile from the house. My dad had read about it in the paper earlier, and took me down there to see it. I have been fascinated with steam ever since. 24 years later, my wife and I just bought our first house. It has a basement. [:D]
I backed into it. The wife got the HP train set for her and the kids which happily ran on the floor until the pet fur (3 dogs, 1 cat) and the carpet fuzz stopped it. So built a table which would need a track plan that did the Christmas loop thing as well as have the possiblility of operations. It now has a reversing section, yard, spurs, and turntable with round house. Boy did discover how to launch a locomotive and have a corn field meet while working with 4 locomotives through 3 cabs. If it was a weed I’d probably have to spray it.
Tossup; my first HO set was an 80’s bachmann circle trainset- the warbonnet Santa Fe F set started my foray into HO.
Second, it was after we set up my father’s 1950’s era American Flyer set, it made me want a layout- but in HO. I’ve been hooked ever since.
Definately! I had always loved trains since childhood, but I was 28 when I ran across and entered a model railroad store for the first time a a giant permanent flea market in Orlando, FL. I was immediately hooked. I bought my first issue of MR that day, subscribed a month later, started buying HO models quickly, started planning a layout, Then after a year and a move to a new home I switched to N scale (never built an HO layout), started my first layout, and the rest is history. That was 10 years ago and I am constructing my second layout in N scale now and making plans for a lifelong future in this hobby.
Ron
Being continuously exposed to grimey BloodyNose units in the Roseville yard when I was young. Plus I had various toys and whatever through childhood. Also I used to watch Tracks Ahead (the railroad variety show on) PBS and was super impressed by the layouts featured. I wanted to become like them. Evenutually, I started buying real model railroad products (Athearn locos, Atlas flex track, etc.) And I turned into me.
I had miles and miles of Aurora AFX HO slot car track and a dozens of cars when I was a kid. Had always planned to build a layout with this, but money (being a kid) was an issue and sports took over. Last year (Fifteen years later) I found an HO box car with my company’s logo on it. I bought it with the intention of mounting it on a single piece of track and making it a display piece for the mantel.
I went to my LHS and ended up buying a loco to pull the boxcar, another boxcar to go with it, some switches and flex track, and here i sit planning my railroad empire!
The day my grandpa, Big Bill Hawley, lifted me up to the steps of his SW-1000 and I felt the power vibrating under me, the heat coming off the engine, and oddly enough, when I got a cone-cup of water from the water cooler on-board, I heard from my relatives that after that all I thought of were trains.
Thanks, grandpa!
Discovering all of the Galveston County Model Railroad Club’s layouts upstairs at the Texas City Museum (particularly their N scale layouts), recalling all of my youthful fascination with railroads (proto and model), and realizing that N scale would offer me a creative outlet I had been missing in my apartment lifestyle. That all happened about two years ago. www.gcmrrc.org
Key issue is “serious”. In terms of my original introduction to model railroading, my father had a Lionel set-up (nothing fancy) in the basement which was there before my earliest memories, and which I loved. I moved into HO when I was eight with a Mantua “General”. and accompanying passenger and freight cars. I gradually built it into a fairly elaborate train set in my large attic room but it wasn’t “serious” - the terrain consisted of two Life-Like “grass” mats, some lichen, and a few trees - even though I did have a great deal of fun with it. We moved in the mid-60s and during my high school years and first two years of college (during my home vacations) I built a 6x10 layout in the basement that was more “serious” but also taught me mostly what not to do. The interest never left me but it was 15 years before I had space and money (now the resource issue is time). I started reading the model press, going to train shows, and visiting layouts. After two years of this, I took the plunge in 1988 and never looked back. The need to dismantle the railroad probably delayed our most recent (and hopefully final) house move by several years. (To digress: I planned as carefully as I could to make the permanently installed portion of the layout movable. Other than being able to easily retrieve all the structures, trees and detail items for re-use, it was a complete waste of time as I found that it makes no sense to try to make a group of custom “modules” fit into an entirely different space).
My mother and Aunt bought me a Marx 027 Battery power train for christmas when I was 4 years old. I have been involved with Toy/Model Trains since. switched scale a few times in the last 35+ years.
From Marx 027 to Lionel 0 Gauge to G Gauge and currently HO and G.
John
I remember from the very dark ages that my Dad had an ourtside third rail O gauge layout in the basement of our home. I was fascinated , but only allowed to look. When I was seven, my Uncle Roy and family was coming from Detroit to visit for a month. I stood on the edge of the platform at the station and waited to see the train. When it came, I could not move. The hair on the back of my neck tingled, the muscles in the backs of my calves trembled, I was frozen in place. The locomotive was a steam engine and it blew steam on me and filled my nostrils with the pungent smell of hot oil and burning coal. I knew I had to have one of those, no question. I was hooked and have remained so through the years. What a grand hobby it is.
Tom
I was destined to be a train man. My first words were “Choo choo.” I was obsessed with Thomas until I was about 7, and now I am obsessed with actual trains. It was just destiny, that’s how I can explain it. I am the only train buff in my house.
~[8]~ TrainFreak409 ~[8]~
I really cannot remember the real beginning of my model railroading, as it was probably Christmas 1960 that my Dad, who was a union carpenter back then, built me a 4x8 HO oval with two tracks and a couple of sidings in the basement and got me started. I just never remember not having a “train table” until I left home in 1975. By then, it was a 9x24 HO layout that he and I had built up over 3-4 years. But the love of steel wheels on steel rails was instilled in me, never to leave.
After that it was the service for 6 years, then school, marriage, work, kids, and everything else that keeps many from ever experiencing model railroading. Then in 1994 my wife bought me as a Christmas gift a Bachmann NYC Niagara from one of the train magazines that I somehow had never stopped buying. I found a club nearby, joined and I’ve never looked back. My wife loves it when we get a new train of any kind. And we’ve gotten plenty of them over the last 9 years. I’m now seriously planning a 12x11 around the room shelf layout 60" off the floor for the spare bedroom where I keep my desk and computer.