Just wondering , All of you out there can you tell me what your first layout was like? how old you were ? do you miss it ? let me Know[8D]
53, and I’m still working on it. It’s a massive 5 x 10.
My first one was a 4X6 in the attic. Laid the brass track with fiber tie strips right on the attic floor. As you can imagine, it was a total disaster! That was in about '62 and I was 16. Still at it 40 years later.
Tom
I am working on it as we speak. It has been an on going progress for a few months now. It is a 6 x 16 HO Lay out, and I am 21 years old.
Right now I am just waiting on some foam from the guys around here that work construction. They give me all of they scraps from the day for $5 or less.
Baker
My very first layout was on a ping pong table (not regulation size 4x9). It was a Marx 027. Since it set on the dinning room table, I had to take it down when we had company. I was about 10. My first HO was a 5x4 and I was 32. I now have a 8 x 18 with a 5 x 4 side section (reverse L shape). I’m 70.
I don’t miss the Marx as it got me my first HO. Some of the wood of my first HO layout is in my current layout.
My first was a shared Christmas gift when I was 10. I have two brothers. It comprised a Marklin steamer and a switcher diesel. It was on a 4X8 sheet of plywood that another gentleman had painted up and strewn with green sawdust, and he had painted roads on it. There was a mountain and tunnel, and one siding. The steamer actually had smoke…this was in '63.
I don’t know what happened to it…we probably let it go into disuse within a couple of years. I know it did not return to Canada with us in 1966.
I am currrently building a 9’X13.75’ open grid and L-girder layout that will redeem me for the serious errors of my first construction last year.
I just laid 9 feet of flex-track, and - ooohhh- it looks purdy.
My first was a 4’ by 8’ HO figure 8 with an oval around it, it was built by my dad when I was 6. It consisted of track laid on cork on top of a piece of plywood. The track work was excelent but that is as far as it ever got. Fast forward to 4th grade, I made “my” first layout in N scale, it was a 4’ by 6’ and the worst layout that you could immagine running a train on, but the train did run and I learned a LOT from it.
Mine was the 4x8 with the grass matt all over it. Throw in the painted foam mountain with a tunnel and lots TYCO running loose on the track. Mom put it together herself and watched me run trains and fall in love…
Last time I tinkled with it I was 16…boxed it all away until one day, with my soon to be step son and I were just getting to know each other and I dug it out again… Havent had the chance too look back… 3 years later,. I have over 325 feet of track, sound equipped engines and a layout that takes up most of the 2 car garage. Now, I run trains with my kid.
My first was an N scale empire 12x16 back in the mid 70’s. Now in HO. The reason I sold out of it ,is that in the 70’s stuff was not that good then and not much available. That’s different now.
I’m just starting my first layout. It’s a 5x9 with a2.5x9 “L”. I’ll be starting the benchwork this weekend. Still tweeking the track plan. I’m 49. My first trainset was a Lionel with oval track when I was about 3 years old. I wish I still had it.[:(]
I had been in the model railroading hobby for years and had painted a lot equipment, but never built a layout until the early 1970s. A friend who was a training officer for SP at Taylor Yard in LA asked me to build a switching layout so he could train new new hires to learn switching moves. The layout was about a foot wide and 8 feet lone having a siding and several spur tracks. He used it for years.
My first was a standard 8x4. I had lots of mountains and different heights of track. It was a typical folded dog-bone shape. I had planned that it would be my only layout, but as my tastes and knowledge in MRRing matured I found it to be severly lacking in operational possibility. So I destroyed it back in January 2006 and have been working on my new J-Shaped Dog Bone ever since…with no regrets. The new layout has lots of long runs, lots of switching possibilities, and all the operational possibility I currently want in a layout. It’s a lot bigger too, measuring in at 16x9 with 138.5 feet of track (HO scale).
Trevor
Trevor
My first layout was an O scale Lionel train set with an oval of track, a gas station, garage and service center. The year was 1964 and I was 4 years old. I found out from a collector that that double diesel Santa Fe set, in good condition would fetch over $1,000.00 on the market. Even more if it still had the original box. Too bad I don’t have it any more.
Too bad we have to make mistakes to learn from them, but then, we wouldn’t learn anything.
In 1949 my dad bought me an English Yard Bird and I started a 4x9 model of the Minnesota Iron range with the Crosby ore pit on one end. A silicon rectifyer modified an old Lional transformer to hand laid brass track in Tru scale road bed. I still have the engine though it is now relegated to the old station scene. I am on layout number four right now.
