When I was a boy, I sold my large O-gauge layout for way too little money, and bought HO’s. This was sometime around 1960. I still miss those old Lionels. I’m not sure whether I would have continued with HO or O, but it wasn’t a smart business decision, knowing what I do now. That old Lionel outfit would have been worth a small fortune today.
Then, when I was in college and not using the trains any more, I boxed them up and put them in the basement of my Mom’s house. After she sold the house and moved to a retirement community, I moved the trains to a string of apartments, and finally to my own attic. Two years ago, I pulled them out from their 40-year slumber. They formed the basis of my current HO layout.
But, what did I actually re-use? The engines were pretty much a lost cause. For one thing, most didn’t run at all, and the bodies were nothing more than crummy-looking Mantuas and very old Blue-Box Athearns. The track, of course, was brass. Most of the structures were cardboard, and did not age well, although a couple of the wood and plastic ones have survived. The vehicles were almost all plastic toys, and even the figures were either plastic figures standing at attention or low-relief lead castings which suggested rather than modelled human beings.
On the other hand, most of the rolling stock on my layout came out of those 40-year-old newspaper wrappings. I’ve converted the cars to Kadees, and added new trucks or wheels as needed, although I’ve still got the original plastic wheels on most. And last, I’m still running my old transformers to drive the DCC system and provide auxilliary power for lights and turnouts.
So yeah, we move on. I went to see a big N-scale layout over the weekend. I loved it, and I can see the lure of big curves in small spaces, but my eyes are already running up against the stops working in HO, and I know that as I age I’ll
