This may or may not have been asked berfore but how did you get hooked on model railroading, what is your story?
Mine: I grew up rate next too a coal mine I would always go down near the track and watch the trains go by when i was about 5-6 sadly the mines closed and then i started to go places like the Horseshoe curve and other vairous place, because its about 20 mins from here, From there I would get me llionel trains and he would get me freight cars and things. What realy got me hooked was for one thing i was a railfan and another goind too train shows and seeing other peoples creations witch made me always want one of my own
An older friend of mine had a lot of American Flyer trains and he was asked by some local train buffs to display them at an annual charity train show. He designed a 8X12 layout that needed to be portable. He asked and I built the table. He asked and I helped lay out the track. He asked and I helped run the trains. I was smitten. That was 6 years ago! I now have 30+ postwar AF steamers, 60+ rolling stock and 15 accesories, a 6 1/2 x 9 1/2 layout, and have something that is a great timeless hobby, that is satisfying and fun.
I also have a portable layout that I join with my friends 8 x 12 and we’ll be getting the cars ready for the show (Thanksgiving Weekend) soon.
I love to see people watch our old post war locos and accesories work!
You’re right. This same idea, under various titles, shows up every month or so.
My answer is still the same. My parents bent the twig by gifting me with a Lionel tinplate 027 train on my first Christmas. I teethed on a box car. Not much later I noticed that everything interesting in my neighborhood ran around on steel wheels with rails under them. That included the 3rd Avenue “L,” several streetcar lines and an obscure freight line in a cut a few blocks west of the family abode.
I graduated from Lionel, to home-built wood and cardboard creations in 1:196 scale, to U.S. prototype HO and finally, in 1960, to HOj. My prototype interest got set in stone shortly thereafter, and I’ve been modeling to varients of the same scheme ever since.
As a kid and early teenagerI dabbled alot with the hobby, but not very seriously. Over 3 years ago I dugout my trains in a attempt to bond with my new girlfreind’s 3 year old son… I had as much fun as he did. I found after he went to bed, I was going back and playing myself. Now, 3 years later, married and I have my 2nd garage layout. Hooked hard forever. Besides, much easier on the back than golf.
The “very first layout”… This was about 2 weeks before the virus really got a hold of me.
It was a Lionel train set that I got in 1964 that did it for me. In 1966, my dad built me a simple 4x8 HO layout with 2 mainlines, and interchange and 1 spur. One train was OO scale made by mantua and the other was HO scale made by Bachmann. Can anybody remember when Bachmann wasn’t made in China? I can. The HO layout was finally trashed in 75 and I didn’t really do much for several years after that. In 79 I got a HO trainset, just to mess around with, and it snowballed from there. The old mantua OO loco finally bit the big one in 83 when the motor shorted out. The Bachmann had gone to the trash can years before that. A friend got me hooked on Athearn in 81 and I’ve been using them ever since. Recently, I bought two LifeLike Proto2000’s (a GP30 and a PA2) and I’ve been very happy with them. I expect that this bug will be the end of me someday, but if you can’t enjoy yourself, what’s the use of living? I’m currently working on a new layout (HO of course) that is 2 track, a mainline and a shorter branchline running in a loop inside the mainline. The two of them will be able to interchange rolling stock and share spurs and siding. It’s strictly analog block control for now but I think I’ve been bitten by the DCC bug. I am seriously considering changing to DCC in the near future. I’m going to start with the Bachmann EZ command system to get the feel of it, then take the plunge with a better system, possibly Digitrax, when I can afford it
Late 70’s I had a train set O then in the 80’s I got an HO set… did not got any bigger till late 90’s!
now still dont have place to set up still… yeah have every thing, I keep on going to hobby shop and buy on what I see, I keep buying the coop cars with my town elev. name on it.! not sure how many I have … ha ha…
some of the snow plow (snow removal) money I got and went buy new engines so I have all same set of names BNSF…
It all started when I was 4yrs old, my grandma would take to park avenue in the Bronx to watch the trains coming from grand central, new haven, or white plains, etc… As the trains would go by she would make me count how many cars would pass by. My mother would take me downtown and she would let me look out of the back window in the last car going downtown, coming back uptown she would take me to first car to look out the window. As I got older, my family took a trip to Virginia and I got my first taste of freight trains, been hooked since. Got my first tyco steam engine, can’t remember the engine size or number. I just remember it was a figure eight set. At the age of thirteen, I had the help of a gentlemen who helped me build my first 4x8 ho railroad. And to this day at the age of thirty eight I still play with trains. Okay I’m out of the closet now, take your best shots!
Hi, I got hooked by accident, I was interested in UK modelling and as I sat down someone had left a copy of MR in my seat by accident. I started to look through the pages and was fascinated by what I saw. As I looked at the ads the prices of stock was so cheap,k up a basic Athearn loco for about $25 back then where as a British loco which didn’t have flywheel drive cost around $110 and that was it all the British stuff went and in came the US stuff.
As a kid my parents did a layout for me. I did a 4x8 for my son’s about 12 years ago.
About 2 years ago my lovely wife coaxed me into one of those stores that on the outside looked like a nik-nak store. Common she said, go in the back and look at the trains while I shop.
I thought, that may be a really neat hobby given the advancements since I last dabbled. Bought a couple of mags and have never looked back.
Lionels appeared under the Christmas tree when I was a little boy, probably about 4 or 5 years old. A steamer with whistle and smoke, and a few freight cars, eventually grew from a 4x8 on plywood to a pair of 4x8’s, with a GG-1 and some passenger cars added. That layout never did leave the floor, and I can still remember having to jack up an edge to reach under and install wiring. By the time I was 8 or 9, my Dad didn’t have to help any more, except, of course, for being Santa.
Somewhere in my early teen years, I sold all those Lionels and bought a small set of HO’s, along with two 4x8 homosote sheets and some 1x4 lumber. That layout lasted until I was out of college, but I had to dismantle it and put the trains in boxes, as I didn’t live there any more, and had no space in my string of apartments.
Oddly, it was my wife who urged me to take the trains out of storage and set them up again. I think she had this vision of a Martha Stuart train running around the tree, set up on a card-table layout. The old engines ran poorly, and I had no interest in that kind of little display train set. But, when I became really hooked on Flight Simulator, she again urged me to set up trains as an alternative to hours in front of the computer. Once I broke ground on my 5x12 foot layout, I hardly touched the Flight Simulator stuff anymore. Hooked again, I suppose.
The bug really bit me when I was 6 and the family traveled to Colorado, complete with a ride on the Durango & Silverton. The famous story is that every time the steam locomotives were visable on a curve, I was hanging out the window trying to get a better view. My mother had to hold onto my belt loops so that I didn’t sail out the window. When we got home, my father broke out his American Flyer 322 Hudson. After that he built me an HO 4x8. I’ve gone thru phases with model trains, but my love of trains has never waned.
John,
The kid is absent from all but the first photos. Does he still participate, or just look at you and shake his head sadly? [swg]
Basically ha a set when I was younger was my dads and my older brothers. But after I got into model cars the trains went to a box never to be seen for years and years. We moved when I was 8 then still not into trains. Finally around 97 We decided to add a train to the Dickens layout for christmas well after trying to fit HO on a very smal piece of plywood I failed but noticed I like to work with track. I fixed up some old trains for a friend I liked working on them. Now after 1 real (up all the time) Layout, and 3 previous Christmas layouts I have the bug worse than ever. I see an engine I gotta have it, I see a freight car I say oh got to have it, But what bug really hit me was custom painting. I know lok for undecorated cars and locomotives, or i find myself thinking can I remove the paint on the rollingstock or locomotive. So I am in it full blown.
My dad’s fairly large 027 layout when I was growing up. Add in the fact that I grew up in a fairly small town in Missouri, where we could go down to the main line that ran through the middle of town fairly easily. Then add to that, the fact that I rode the short trip from Newburg Missouri to may home town(about an 8 mile trip) several times on the Frisco passenger line. Now getting back into the hobby prob. for all of the above reasons.
All down hill…