In the Layout and Layout Building section a father has a post about building a first railroad - (see Order of Consttruction). He was looking for some input into the sequence of building a layout and there have been many responses. The one that made me smile was when he said his son liked to run ‘wide open’ and his goal was to make sure everything didn’t land on the floor.
What struck me was that this more than a father/son project, but it was possibly the beginning of a life long interest in trains. Just the other day my dad told me about me asking for a ‘too-too twain’ for Christmas when I was a young kid and they bought me a wind-up Marx train that ran along the floor. I also remember the old Lionel set I had that ran in a neverending oval on a sheet on plywood - and I managed to launch them a few times. How is wish today I still had that Lionel. But for me, that was the beginning.
So, how did all begin for you? I thought it might be interesting to hear some stories.
I read the story of the father building the layout for his son/s. It really put a smile on my face and brought back memories of over 20 years ago when I experienced the same.
I had Marx, then Lionel when young always had that facination for “trains” like so many. When my son was 5, he showed such interest in trains, his godmother gave him a “train Set” for Christmas. It all began from there, Of couse the trains were immediately run on the kitchen floor Christmas day, within a week the good 'ol 4x8 was started. One loop w/ passing siding, elevated section to use the Atlas Chord bridge, 2 small sidings etc. Of coarse replaced all that steel sec w/ Atlas NS flex. Building this for my son and 2 daughters was such an exciting time for them and myself. Countless hours were spent in the basement running and working on the trains. Such a rewarding experience an bonding with my children.
I joined a local club http://www.ssmrc.org/ shortly afterwards due to my renewed interest in HO modeling. After a few years, my kids interest in the trains dropped off as they had so many other social things going on in thier lives.My oldest daughter, however was rather amazing at how she learned to run cabs at the club. The old layout was a fairly good sized DC/ cab controlled. She knew all the blocks and turnouts and could run a train w/ the best of them, and she was only 9 at the time. Some of the older “veteran” members would almost have fits, seeing a “child” run a cab. Didn’t take too long 'til she earned the respect of most as to her ability.
I’ve belonged to the club since. Now the children are in their 20s and at least know just what to get Dad for B-day or Christmas.
The origional train set is boxed up along w/ the old Riverosi/ AHM items that were their Grandfathers. Of coarse also set aside are the Athearn BB, engines I custom painted for each of them and a good
I was maybe 5 or 6 when I got my first train set, a N scale Union Pacific F unit was the locomotive. My dad was interested in trains as a hobby and I guess I inherited it.
being somewhat in the ‘new’ generation of modellers (I’m 17) I have memories of watching Thomas on TV and having quite the extensive wooden train collection. I’d build some rather complex layouts and I still have those wooden trains today. My first memories of being exposed to model trains was when my dad took me to a train show when I was about 3. I distinctly remember watching someone run a big boy around one of the layouts. Shortly after, for my birthday/christmas (they’re only 3 days apart) I recieved a life-like train set. I played with it so much I burned out the motor in the loco. I got a few more life-like trains but my intrest didn’t really take off until about 2006 when my grandmother got me a subscription to model railroader for my birthday. Shortly after we built a 4x6 layout in my room. from then on I began to seriously be involved in the hobby. I joined a local club, and have accumilated a siezable collection of models. My newest and most prominent intrest is the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad and I’m working on plans for a layout based on Wilmington, NC circa 1949
As a kid I was into model cars. Then one day I noticed Model Railroader magazine in the school library. I picked it up and by the time I was halfway through the magazine I was hooked. I read back issues and devoured the new one each month. I saved my money and about six months after picking up that first issue. I bought an N scale train set. I was dedicated to the hobby until I finished college. The demands of starting a career just didn’t allow much room for trains.
After a couple of decades in the Space Program my life had settled down some, so I got back into the hobby. I’ve been back for about 12 years; It is even more fun, now.
When I was about 5, my father, who was a fighter pilot in the Air Force got stationed to Phalsbourg, France. The popular trainsets of the time and place were Märklin. I remember Dad setting it up on a sheet of plywood, complete with pushbuttons to control the turnouts. A number of years later, he bought my brother and I each a Lionel trainset. My brother was more into the toy robot they got him, whereas, I spent hour after hour running my trainset.
I was into the HO scale AFX cars when I was younger and built a nice race track the size of a ping pong table in my basement where I would spend hours and hours racing the cars, fixing the cars and adding scenery to the layout. Neighborhood friends would come over with their own cars and we would race the cars after school. One day a friend gave me some HO scale train equipment to add to the layout. I don’t remember much about the trains (but I can remember most of the HO hot rod cars) other than it had a Kellogg’s covered hopper. Fast forward to fatherhood and I thought some model trains would be nice thing to share with my son. Add another son to the mix and now we needed a dual mainline so both can have track time. One son is now 19 and in college and the 16 and in high school. They both have an extensive collection of their own railroad equipment. The college guy will come down to the layout room once in a while when he visits home but I can count on him being there during his Christmas break. The younger guy is a 51 weeker. He comes down to the layout room for about seven days straight and runs all of his equipment. He packs it up when done and I won’t see him again in the layout room until next year. I continue to muddle along in the hobby building the layout, maintaining the equipment and enjoying every minute of it.
My greatest influence was my namesake, my Grandfather. He was an railroad engineer and a model railroader. I remember sitting and watching the trains run in his basement as a very young child. He has both HO and O scale. My father always had an O scale train for under the Christmas tree also. When I was in Scouting in the mid 70’s there was an ad in Boy’s Life magazine for a company that one could sell candles and Christmas cards to “earn” prizes. I sent in and did that so that I could earn myself an HO train set. I still have the loco and cars from that set somewhere. It was a red and yellow Rock Island freight train. When my Grandad found out about it, he bought the plywood and built me a train board for under my bed and he bought me a small ATSF switching engine. I used that until I left home. Everything has been packed away since. I get interested and then lose interest quite frequently. I just hope to finally settle down inthe next year or two and build a layout.
About 4 decades ago I was visiting neighbor’s garage sale, and there, under the table was a big box{actually boxES} of Lionel trains and track and transformers. I begged and pleaded with my father to buy it/them. He DID go look and decide NOT to “buy someone else’s junk”. BUT at Christmas {when I’d nearly totally forgotten about the trains altogether} THERE IT WAS!! Under the tree was an oval of Marx O27 steam train!!!
Later that grew into a 3 intertwined oval layout on an L shaped 2 4x8 sheets layout to play with during my pubescent and teen years, that I had to share with my brother. We could run three trains {one for me, one for my brother, and one for my father to run {which he rarely did}.
Then as a teen, I Had a GF whose parents were moving. Her Father was THROWING OUT Into a very large dumpster a bunch of N scale stuff!!! He dind’t have a layout, but “collected” N scale stuff. I was digging the stuff out of the dumpster. He discovered this and said “don’t you think you should compensate me for that stuff?” I said, very clearly, and not earning any brownie points with him, that “you have tossed this stuff into the trash, therefore it has NO VALUE to you and I can take it f I wish to rifle through the trash”. So then I had a small N scale layout.
I always wanted HO tough.
Fast forward to 6 years ago. There, on the marque sign the nearby auction house uses, was a telling of a model train show/sale coming up so we {My Other Half - MOH} went as MOH was also fascinated with trains. We didn’t see much that was in good shape as it had obviously been stored in a damp dirty basement {why do people do that?}. We declined to buy anything. SO I went digging for my N scale stuff and found it lacking for what I wanted now. MOH said to not throw it away, MOH would be glad to use it!! SO MOH is into N scale and I am into newly purchased HO.
I pushed an issue in the smallest of the bedrooms in our trailer ho
My late grandfather and father are solely responsible for my interest in trains. My grandfather always had a Lionel layout around the tree, and my father was big on Tyco HO. When I was little, he had a plethora of Tyco Santa Fe units. I was enamoured with his huge Alco Super 630’s. The year between my aunts death and my grandmother moving in to our lower floor of the house, my father built (an undecorated, but) show-stopping layout that took up the majority of the 15x20 livingroom. I think he wired in capacity to run 6 trains at once, so all the children and neices/nephews could run. I even got to take his precious Super Spirit of '76 for a spin. One year for my birthday and Christmas, the Burlington Northern arrived in my life. Unbeknownst to me, my parents had gotten me a (Life-Like) C-628. So I had my “big train” and about a dozen BN box cars and gons to haul around the permanent, but rolls under the bed, layout that my dad built for me. Even painted it green, painted roads in, and wired street lights. Over the years, I customized it (removed the tressel portion when traction tires broke), added urban decay, etc. To this day, that oval layout remains in my parents attic. Now, I’m 31 and all of my latests purchases? After buying all the Super 630’s that I lusted after as a child, I’ve been digging on BNSF… a combination of his preferred childhood line and my only childhood line. It all kind of came full circle.
My dad was a model railroader well as a railroader and one could say railroading is in my blood since I come from a family of railroaders.
I’m told I “ran” my first model locomotive when I was one year old-with dad’s help of course.I started running my dad’s trains(O Scale 2 rail) when I was three and I haven’t look back since.
I wish I had something other than an old 8mm movie that I could scan and post, but I was runnign HO traisn by the time I was 2, it’s on film. My parents had a room full of HO before I came along - the room they used was my bedroom! I’ve lost track of the photos of it, or I’d scan them for sure. After I cae along, the railroad was limited to a loop around the tree - this is what I am seen operating a 2. A coupel of years later we moved to the house my Mom still lives in, and we started setting up larger and larger layouts, but without any permanent space, it was only from Thanksgiving to New Years. Started with a 4x4, then my Mom got my Dad an N scale Aurora Postage Stamp set so a small N scale layotu was added, partially overlapping the HO part forming a tunnel. That lasted one season, as I burned out too many N scale switch coils, they were much more delicate than HO. So we moved up to a 4x8 HO layout. Then it gained a 2 foot extension on the end for a yard, then it gained an extension all around the outside for a larger radius loop to handle the Rivarossi Hudson and passenger cars. Somewhere around the era of the first 4x8, I woke up one Saturday to find my Dad had all teh track completed around the loop, so I tried to run a train. It stopped somewhere in the pack, so I poked around and discovered the insulated joiners and the extra feeders that hadn’t gotten hooked up. By the time my Dad got home from his saturday half day at work, I had the trains running all around. I was about 6 at the time - is it any wonder I knew before high school that I wanted to become an electrical engineer? By the time of the final layout, I was the only one in the family who could run trains without derailments. My Dad built it all, but when he tried to run trains, he’d get 10-15 minutes in and end up throwing the wrong switch and derailing something. Sometimes I let my little sister run the trolley, or the cable cars going up the mountain.
my son was about 4 wife ask what i wanted for christmas and i said ho train set and it went from there.made her a deal she could have a 2 child if i could expand the layout I won! rambo1…love my daughter alot both collage now.
I was 3 years old in 1957 and in my grandfather’s big black Buick, driving along what was then called Wayzata Boulevard just west of downtown Minneapolis on an overcast fall day. That road ( now I-394) passed along the Great Northern’s Cedar yard and as I looked out the window, I saw all sorts of locomotives moving, and there were, it seemed, a bunch of steam locomotives sitting on tracks. I was mesmerized and from that point, became a train fan. Years later, I learned my grandfathers on both sides were customers of GN in their businesses (wholesale agricultural goods) and that what I saw that bleak November day in 1957 was a bunch of GN steam brought down to the city for scrapping. The memory is so fresh, I could paint a picture of that day if I could! Skip ahead after my first Lionel set, to when I discovered HO on a casual trip to Gager’s Hobby store in downtown Minneapolis one winter day in 1965, and my next train set was an Athearn one with a blue and white Santa Fe F unit. Never looked back, never stopped loving model railroading! Cedarwoodron
My father, Paul, Jr., has been a model railroader & railfan since at least the early 1950’s when his father, Paul, Sr., worked at the Western Auto. The local W.A. used to be a Lionel dealer (and later became a Toy Shop), and my grandfather would routinely bring home trains. When my dad went into the Air Force in 1957, he switched to HO scale. After the USAF, he came home and built a 4 x 8. Then he got married to my mom (who had Marx O-scale trains as a girl) and built a house. Into the new basement went the 4 x 8, and it became “The Model Railroad That Grows” (see: old Kalmbach book). I was born several years later, and when I was brought home the first time there was a handmade wooden toy train set waiting for me made by Paul, Sr. It was therefore rather obvious that I was going to be a model railroader.
As a kid, I had been on several family train rides throughout New England: Amtrak to NYC, the Wolfeboro RR, Edaville RR,many trips to Boston on the MBTA, and probably many others that I can’t recall. I also went to some train shows every once and while with my dad. At 15, I started getting more interested in trains and the hobby when my parents and I went to a local train show put on by a local club, the South Shore Model Railway Club (www.ssmrc.org). Not only was the show very interesting and diverse, but the club itself was a marvel to me. Kadee couplers, multi-cab DC block control, car cards & waybills…wow, it really opened my eyes to what was possible in the hobby.
I kinda nagged my father into joining the club that summer with the idea that we’d only be members for a few years. Well, 22 years later he’s still a member, and when I turned 18 I became one, too. Next year, I’ll have 20 years in the club, and I’m both the Operations Chairman and the Layout Design Chairman. I’m proud to say I
