i was 5 years old and my dad and i was a part of the winona railroad club. we where at my first model railroad show/sale. my dad was talking to a friend of his and my dad gave me 20$. while he talked, i said what can i do with this 20$ and i saw a running n scale layout. i took the 20$ and i went around to some of the tables where they had stuff on sale. the first thing i got for 4$ and i got was a n scale RS2 locomotive which i still have. then i got a tranformer, track,and 5 box cars which i still have. for all of that stuff i only spent 18$ and then i went home and built a small layout. my dad said lets try g scale we did, but my heart was with n scale. then my dad said lets try ho scale so we did, but my heart was with n scale. last fall i got out my n scale stuff and then one of my dads friends husbin died and she wanted a n scale layout out of her basement and then we broke it down and i got all of his cars and locomotives. the layout was no good so we scraped it. i started on a table layout and then this week i scraped the table idea. then i started the n scale modular layout last night. now i am 20 years old.
Catch the bug good and young, that’s the way to do it. This rather insidious bug may lay dormant for years but can reemerge at any time!
A modular is probably a really good idea since it provides tremendous flexibility and won’t be like a boat anchor holding you in one place.
I got started when I received a Lionel “Super O” trainset when I was a kid. I then went to HO scale, N scale, and then On30.
A Lionel train set 61 years ago.
Lionel steam train set with blowing whistle Christmas of 1947.
I don’t remember the year, but I’m sure the day was Christmas. There was a Lionel around the tree. My layout grew annually, but I eventually got the “realism” bug and switched to HO in my early teens. Then came college, cars, girls, moving out, getting a job, the “entire catastrophe,” as Zorba the Greek would say.
For 40 years, I dreamt of subways. I grew up outside of New York City, and always loved subways best. I started thinking of getting back into the hobby about 8 years ago, and found the LIfe-Like (then) Proto cars. I built my subway layout first, below the “normal” layout. My subway dreams ended, but now I have them anytime I want.
Those old HO trains moved with me, always in boxes, until I took them out. Most of the old rolling stock is on my layout today, refreshed with metal wheelsets and Kadees. It’s nice to have my old friends back, y’know?
I’m told I was pushing a wooden Loco around on the living room floor at the age of two years old.
I picked up a copy of Model Railroader at the school library when I was 12 - instantly infected. I’m 54 now, and the hobby is more fun than ever.
That’s how it happened for me. When we were stationed in France in the 50s (my dad was a career fighter pilot), he set up a Marklïn based railroad on a sheet of plywood. In the 60s, he bought my brother and I each a Lionel trainset. Although, I didn’t start on my own first layout in the 80s, the seed had been planted. Now, in the new millennium, I’m working on my most ambitious layout that takes up over half of my 33x35’ basement, er, train room.
Christmas 1976
Lionel Santa Fe Twin Diesel set
Kevin
Christmas 1963.
Santa brought me a Marklin starter set. Stayed in the hobby ever since.
This a fine and interesting topic and fun to read. My own story is not that simple. Chirstmas of 1941 found me at just 3 years . Dad was awaiting orders from the Navy as this was just three weeks after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He came home with a Lionel train set and I can remember almost everything in complete detail. Within minutes the orange and blue boxes were torn open and both Dad and Mom were on the floor setting this set up. They must have spent hours on their elbows with their butts facing the heavens. What I did not know …was this a toy for me or them? The latter proved true, as immediately after the war, up went the benchwork and by 1961, the little 027 set morphed into a giant 95’ x 16’ Hi-rail layout with Gargraves track and custom built three rail turnouts. Dad was never satisfied with Lionel switches and track, but loved everything else. Much of his equipment lives today in my display area including much of the 1941 starter set.
This was Dad’s hobby, and even though I enjoyed everything about it, I never once worked on it , nor was I allowed to run it unsupervised. All was sold in 1961, the year I graduated from college and went into Army. I actually thought that model trains were gonna be just a fine memory until I discovered articles on John Allen and his magnicent pike. Dad’s layout was great and huge, but nothing like what Allen was doing. I was hooked and never looked back. Actually It was on my honeymoon in 1962 when I purchased the RMC magazine from a convience store in Florida. We only had a weekend and my wife was beautiful, but all I could think about was John Allen’s layout and my entering into HO. I’m just as passionate today about model trains…possibly more so!
I may add that I had two uncles who ran steam on the Erie and PRR/Reading Seashore Lines. I often rode with them up into the diesel age. UGH! These experiences firmly cemented model railroading into my genetic makeup. There is no cure.
HZ
[:)]
My Dad bought an American Flyer S gauge set at a Navy Exchange when I was six months old…supposedly for me! That was in 1947. I still model in S, though in scale with handlaid track, rather than tinplate. I also still have the original equipment from that set and the cars, converted with scale trucks and couplers, are still in my “roster.”
That’s me in the middle…I would say 1953 or '54.
This is yesterday I realised how much more I have to learn so sort of related to how I got started. Yesterday at the Sante Susana model Rairoad club open house (Southern Calif.) A man and knowlegable wife had a O n30 modular railroad set up. The combination of modules was quite large, he transported it in a trailer. Watching them run it and looking at the super modeling it was apparent that they had been model railroading for years and were what you might call expert. I am working on my layout but there is a lot of things you only learn by doing and experience. Reading about it gets you doing things but you need the experience.
Dennis San Fernando Valley CA.
Good question! My adventure in Model Railroading goes back to 1963 when Dad gave me a Marx HO set, the one with the NYC Hudson, for Christmas. We didn’t start an actual layout until 1968, and the old Marx set was pretty much useless by that time. Dad was an operator for the B&O, and my grandfather on my Mother’s side was just getting ready to retire as a section foreman on the B&O having worked 43 years there.
-Stan
When I was twelve years old my family moved into a neighbourhood near some light industrial trackage. I’d ride my bike down to the tracks and watch the switchers spot cars, and at the time CP was running an S-2 and some S-3s and CN ran an SW9 and some SW900s. That was in 1974.
After some railfanning I wanted to do a little railroading of my own, so that summer I got myself a train set. The hobby shop had a sale on some Model Power train sets (made by Lima of Italy) with a Santa Fe EMD FP45 loco, but I wanted a switcher. I told the store clerk what I wanted, and I got the Model Power set with a Cox Union Pacific SW1500 (same as Athearn’s SW7) instead of the FP45. The rolling stock included a Santa Fe bay window caboose, a Pacific Fruit Express 50’ reefer, a Southern 50’ gondola, and a Pennsylvania 50’ flat car.
I still have the 50’ reefer, and I recreated my first train set after I found another Lima Southern gondola and Pennsylvania flat car. I added a red Athearn bay window caboose and a Life-Like Union Pacific SW9, and I put Kadee couplers on everything. Now I have a fine running replica of my first train set.
And because I got my first train set back in 1974, that is the year that I model in HO scale. Most of my locos are first generation diesels in modern paint schemes.
I had Marx O-O27 trains to “play with” as a kid. As I aged to teens I still played with them…but this time as a serious modeler. I also had some N sclae stuff that the father of my then girlfriend was throwing out as her parents were moving. WHen he saw me digging them out of the dumpster they were filling and he said “don’t you think you should compensate me for those you take?”. I said “correct me if i am wrong. You have thrown them in the trash as unwanted items, correct?” He said yes, but I should pay him if I wanted them. ANd he stopped throwing any more in the dumpster! SO I got what I got {which was quite a bit with locos and RR cars and track and all} to make my own mini RR in Nscale.
THEn life and other things got in the way. SOme years later I picked up a HO set and built a simple board with a single circle of track. Lost that when the house burned down. {Never really had time to get into it much was working 2 jobs in a recession to stay above water}.
Fast forward to 6 years ago. A local auction house advertised a “huge train auction” and we {MOH- My Other Half-and I} went to the preview. It was old Lionel rusty stuff and some old Rusty Lionel HO and some HO stuff a nd a big 4x8 table top with some HO track on it. Nothing we were interested in. But it sparked our interest again and we decided we could buy new stuff instead of paying for “some one else’s junk”. ANd voila! here we are with trains of Ho for me and N scale for MOH! MOH had a european train set from German Grandmother as A kid. SO MOH was no stranger to trains either.
Cute picture! And I STILL wear overalls! LOL!
