We all have great memories of early impressions from some model railroad. For me, it was the first time I got to run a train on the original V&O.
Allan McClelland’s nephew Doug,is a friend of mine from high school. One day in the late 70’s, myself and three other friends (all of us rail fans, and friends of his also), got the chance to go with him to his uncle’s home to run some trains. I didn’t know what to expect, but his name and the V&O empire were well known even then.
As we desended the stairs to the basement, we caught our first glimpse of trackwork (a section of storage track if I remember correctly), and my first thought was…this looks promising.
As we rounded the corner of the stub wall at the end of the stairs…well let’s just say that if you took all your favorite holidays when you were a kid, and added all your birthday presents that you ever got, and then added your favorite desserts to that, you still wouldn’t be anywhere close to describing the joy I felt upon seeing what I was going to get to “PLAY WITH”.
We were there for 3-4 hours, and to me it was the best day ever aside from the day I married my wife and the day our son was born. To be an engineer of one of the half dozen trains that day was more than I could have hoped for, but even after that, we went back to Doug’s parent’s, and got to run some on his layout. Now while his is much smaller than his uncle’s, it was still fantastic in it’s own right. His techniques for scenery, layout operation, and all the rest, made his empire as much of a joy to run as his uncle’s.
Since that day, i have been to a few large layouts with open house events. I have even spent half a day at Entertrainment Junction with my wife and son ( just a short drive down the highway from our home). EnterTRAINment Junction | Home of the World’s Largest Indoor Train Display Even these fine layouts, as nice as they are, can not even come
Pushing S-scale passenger cars around my brother’s 4 x 8 American Flyer layout when I was 2 or 3 years old. (And I had to get a small chair in order to climb up onto the train table.) Needless to say, my brother was not very happy to find me up there. [A]
For me it will be the Columbus(Oh) Model Railroad club when it was located in the basement of the A&P store on the corner of Third & Rich Streets.As a 10 year old that layout wowed me with 2 working yards,2 working passenger terminals,CTC board,6 main line cabs and 2 engine terminals.The main line was point to point.
I went there every visitor night(the second Tuesday night of the month) and watch the trains run…Imangine my joy when the members allowed me to run a train each time I visited…5 years later I was asked if I would like to become a Junior Member-IIRC you had to be 16 but,since I showed up every visitor night they waved the age limit!
Sadly in 1968 we had to tear down the layout and move.We moved to the second floor of a old office building at Buckeye Steel…The club is still there.
I have memories of watching my two older brothers play with their O gauge Marx train, but they are not quite so fond. I was only a toddler at the time so my brothers forbade me from even coming close to the track, let alone touching something. Today, I can blame all of my psychosis on my brothers brutal treatment, or at least I would if I had any![swg]
To make matters worse, by the time I was old enough to play with the trains, the motor had burned out so the train set was relegated to a distant corner of the attic, never to be seen again. Many years later, as my parents were cleaning house, the train set reappeared and they asked me if I wanted it. Well, talk about reliving your childhood! I of course said ‘yes’. I was happier then a proverbial pig in … except the locomotive was toast and my brothers’ attempts to repair it had made that a permanent state.
Enter the world of train shows! I saw an advertizement for one in Bracebridge, Ontario and decided to attend. I hoped to find something at a reasonable price. (Internet searches suggested that a replacement engine would cost a bunch). Lo and behold, I scored two engines for $15.00! Both had plastic bodies, one with a fair bit of damage, but when tested they ran just fine. I was able to install the drive from the damaged plastic loco into the original tinplate locomotive shell. It was a perfect fit!
Next step was to scrabble together some plywood sheets in the garage and set up a track. The original set came with four remote control turnouts and they all worked fine. In a few minutes I was actually running the trains of my deprived childhood! Talk about therapy!!
As you can guess, the thrill wore off in a few days. Tinplate was not my thing.
However, my very understanding wife came to the rescue the following Christmas by giving me Bachmann’s HO Hogwart’s Express. HO was my thing!
That was a few years ago, and since then I have enjoyed the hobby enormously. I still don’t have a layout (the garage
Wnen I was around six years old my father built 3 4’X4’ sections for Lionel trains. They laid on the floor in my bedroom from Thanksgiving until late Winter and then were put away for another year. They obstructed a closet and by that time I was building track ramps on the floor and running my most unliked engine up the ramp to crash on the floor.
The layout had some operation to it with a log loader and a magnetic crane with unloading and uncoupling track. There were 5 turnouts. I spent many an hour loading and unloading logs and scrap metal.
When my son came of age the layout came to life again. We added another section and newer trains. When he lost interest we packed everything away.
When I started HO I got out the old sections and put legs on them .The trains are still packed away.
My earliest direct memories are of setting up the holiday layout in our family room each year, usually started Thanksgiving weekend. Inittially it was a 4x4 HO, then my Dad got an Aurora Postage Stamp N scale set so a small N scale layout was built that partially overhung the HO, providing a tunnel for the HO trains below. Then the N scale was put away and the HO expanded to a full 4x8, and eventually a little larger with a 2 foot extension on one end to fill the distance between the walls and like a 4" wide section to bolt on the front to allow an extra outside loop of 22" radius when my Dad get a Rivarossi streamlined Hudson. By the time of that final largest layout, shortly before my Dad passed away, I was the only oen who could run it. He built most of it, but could rarely run a train more than one lap without missing a turnout and derailing.
I have movie (8mm silent) evidence but no actual memory of me at 2 running a train around the Christmas tree. Said ‘running’ being mostly either stop or full throttle, but it was an old Mantua 0-6-0 die cast loco so the top speed wasn’t exactly fact anyway.
And there was always getting my grandfather to uncover the layout at his house so we could run trains. The palstic came off, the brite-boy went to work, and then we could run. It was a fairly simple layout, built in the upside down fashion (the plywood was attached to the bottom of the frame, making a well) with realy just 3 concentric loops. The inner one ran a 4-wheel trolley, the next one had a AT&T (not the phone company) inmport of the Tri-Ang Rocket set and the outer loop had a Varney SW something or other and some freight cars. Each power pack had a pencil mark for the maximum permissible speed. No turnouts, just circling trains.
I could tell you about my experiences with Marx trains that I owned, but I would rather tell you about a couple of train layouts that I saw.
I was ‘playing’ with a Marx set already when I was invited into a new house that had been built in the neighborhood. It was a doctors house and the boy had an S scale American Flyer layout around the floor. It was fascinating! I had never seen a train without three rail track!
Moving on to several years later, my folks built a new small house in a new home addition. There wasn’t really room for my train so I put it into the attic. In the summer, it was too hot and in the winter, too cold.
About that time, I meet a man who lived two doors up. He wanted to know if I wanted to see his layout. Of course, I said yes. It filled a bedroom in his house and had no scenery, just flat plywood. But it was HO, and I had never seen HO. The hardware stores and Sears didn’t have HO, they just had Lionel, Marx and American Flyer! I watched him run the trains for what seemed to be hours.
I went with him to pick up and deliver locos from various hobby shops and he would take them home and repair them and then return them. It was fascinating. From that point on, my Marx never seemed to be real and it gradually passed away.
Yes, I went into HO when I built for my kids and then, later for myself.
Reading this triggered three memories I have not thought about in a long time. The first is of my cousins Lionel set when I was really young. I have vague memories of it out on the floor in my Aunts large wooden floor living room in the early sixties. I remember the set more when I was older looking at it out in the storage shed in the back yard. I do remember the locomotive was in the five stripe Pennsy scheme wich I thought was odd for Fairfield,TX.
The other memory occured during the mid sixties as I remember seeing a traveling layout in a semi tractor trailer at Wonderland Mall in San Antonio. I could barely see at trackside level but it seemed to have multi levels of HO trains running everywhere. Does anyone remember a traveling HO layout like this?
I’m still not sure if these experiances gave me my love of trains or my Grandfather being a Katy man who lived two houses up from the Smithville yard. When I was four I remember looking out the front living room window at night and seeing the red locomotives of the Deramus era in the yard. Either way we are definantly influenced by our childhood memories.
When I was young I never saw any layouts but my own. I guess there was one in some Museum in Nashville but it was not running when we were there and not too memorable.
But in junior high had an epiphany with the first Lionel set I ever owned. I found it in a 2nd hand store for $10. It was the typical die cast 2-6-4 with really goofy looking 3 rail track. I had owned HO scale for as long as I can remember. I had been through many many temporary “track plans” set up on the living room floor. There was no room for a 4x8 permanent layout anywhere in the house. Anyway I set this TOY thing up on the floor of my 8x9 bedroom. I was amazed at the tight corners and that I could fit a whole layout there. I was amazed at how easy it was to set up. And I made a layout with a couple of reversing loops and DIDN’T have to do any special wiring!!! The thing had a whistling tender. It was sooo much fun to play with compared to the HO. I wasn’t constantly fighting derailments and hook problems - I actually got to play with the train not the problems of the train. Being as experience with electricity as I was, I soon found I could insulate one of the outside rails and use it for block detection, so I soon had working semaphores
Why so many good train memories shared here, I loved reading all of them. From those shared I share one of my own.
Around my ninth birthday back in September 1992 my dad asked me to get a set of Barbie Dolls (for a friend’s birthday) out of the trunk of our Oldsmobile so off I went expecting to find Barbie Dolls in the trunk but oh no! Inside that trunk and before my eyes a Tyco Chattanooga Choo-Choo train set! It had a steam engine, several cars including one with a wheel that had gravel in a drum that rotated as it went over the track, not to mention a whistling bill-board! Of course I asked about the Barbie Dolls when I got back, and found out oh no, surprise! The train is mine! We set it up on the dining room table and it had a loop of track with a bridge and piers that graduated in height. And that night, another surprise as my grandparents got me a Bachmann Smoky Mountain Express train set! Also with a steam engine of course. I don’t think there is anything left of those trains but the memories remain.
One of my fondest memories was building a pair of HO Layouts with my dad and my best friend Matt. I remember tromping through K Mart with my dad buying layout supplies as one idea after another popped into his head. He got the idea to light up the building with Christmas Lights, so off to the garden department we went. Next he got the idea to use pin stripe tape for road lane lines, so our next stop was automotive. That Christmas my folks bought me an oil tank with a diesel horn sound effect generator and a warehouse with a steam whistle.
My friend Matt would come over and we would spend hours running the trains as fast as we could without derailing them. He also bought a few Atlas kits and added them to the layout.
Back around 1966 or 67, I was just a nine year old kid who knew nothing about model railroading. My friend Andrew asked me if I wanted to come over to his house to see his dad’s “trains.” I had no idea of what to expect, but it was a really big deal because we had a chance to go down to the basement and check things out because his dad was “away” for a time.
Apparently my buddy wasn’t allowed to be in the train room by himself, much less drag one of his friends over but kids being kids, we took advantage of the opportunity. Together we snuck down the stairs and he flipped the light switch and immediately the whole basement was illuminated by cool white flourescent lights.
What I saw next will stay with me the rest of my life. The entire basement was overun with an HO gauge layout, most of it was stlll raw benchwork with serpentine spline roadbed, but there were several areas that were finished with scenery. To my youthful eyes it was almost too much to absorb. I particulary remember an area which I later came to realize was a station scene with multiple double-slip switches… At the time I had no inkling of what handlaid track was but later on I became aware from areas which only had wood ties down with no rail that the track must have been all handlaid. Those double-slip switches impressed the heck out of me! Engines both steam and diesel, tons of rolling stock all neatly laid out in drawers under the layout and on shelves on the walls… I’ll never forget it if I live to be 100!
We didn’t dare to touch anything and after about 10 minutes or so we got out of there before we were caught by my friend’s mom or one of his older brothers. I was hooked on model railroading and trains ever since that fateful day. It didn’t take long for me to get my dad to build me a “trainboard” that slid under my bed… the rest is history as they say.
I never got to see that layout again, as about a year later we moved and I changed schools. I didn’t stay in touch with An
My fondest memories are of the first train layout my parents built for me when I was about 4 years old. That was more than 50 years ago both my parents have since passed away and I have fond memories of them every time I do anything with a model railroad item. At the time we lived in a small house built over top of a multi-stall garage. My father and mother built this railroad with out me knowing it and it was in the living room on Christmas morning. It remained set up in the living room as long as we lived there and remained set up in the next 2 houses we lived in. The equipment was Lionel HO scale and Mantua/tyco dual drive F-9 in the B&O scheme. The Lionel cars actually unloaded logs and milk cans. The structures were revel and a few others like atlas and placed around my 4x6 layout with great care.
The really note worthy thing to me was the great sacrifice they made to give that to me as we did not have lots of money at that time. To provide things for me and my brother my parents often did with out something so they could give something to us instead. That made a lasting impression on me and my wife and I continued that tradition with our three children.
On another note my first contact with the V&O came via an article I believe written by Tony Koester, in RMC. His layout and the free lance concept made a lasting impression on me and has influenced my plans for my next layout. I was never there but enjoyed it tremendously in print.
Many of the products that are still produced have nostalgic value to me as they take me back in time to a period that was very dear to me.
Gidday, My earliest memory of model railroading was when I was four in the very early 60s. The head master at the village primary school had a fully automated diorama / layout in a small tool shed. It comprised of an English seaside town, a railway station, harbour complete with two small fishing boats, a yacht and light house. I thought it was amazing, then Mr. Wakling turned off the shed light and threw a switch. The diorama looked as it would in day light, a Great Western tank engine, and two passenger coaches came out between the buildings on the right, stopped at the station then departed disappearing into a tunnel on the left, after a suitable interval it repeated the sequence. Then the sun appeared to go down on the back scene with the sky changing colour and as the sun set, various lights started coming on in the town and train, the light house lit up and started revolving, and as it got darker more lights went off and on in the town and stars came out in the sky. To top it off a fully lit ocean liner sailed across the sea potion of the back board. WOW!!!
In hindsight it would have probably been only 4 foot x 4 foot and had a single oval of track running a Hornby Dublo (OO) tank engine and two passenger coaches. (I checked with my Dad, having emigrated from Great Britain just after the Korean War, he was fan of the GWR: a year or so ago to see if my memories were in fact correct, which they were).
Now a days I wish I had been old enough to see what sort of timing, animation and switching mechanisms Mr. Wakling had put together to run the sequence, being the pre-computer era, but still feel privileged to see something that gave so much pleasure to a small boy.
My first memories of a large layout was the Phoenix, Apache & Turnbow. The members of the Thunderbird Model Railroad Club have/had a layout that was under the grandstands at the Arizona State fairgrounds in Phoenix. During the run of the Arizona State Fair, they would uncover the windows so it was visible to fairgoers. For people who entered the fair from the west side (19th Ave), this was among the first attractions people would see. When I lived in Phoenix, they held an open house one night a month. It’s a standard HO and narrow gauge railroad and truly quite memorable. I still have two of their covered hopper club cars (Accurail). One is in service on my own layout, while the other is still in the box.
For me it has to be my earliest memories of Christmas.My father would set up the Lionel (a 2-8-4) trains around the Christmas tree.I would watch them go round and round for hours.And of course the tinsil falling down on the tracks and shorting everything out.50 some odd years later I still have that trainset
I guess what got my interest in MR was at Christmas down on Main Street in Moose Jaw in the early 1950’s peeking in a train display in the window of French Cleaners at an HO layout, @ 6’x 4’ of a little mountain scene, with a small train going around very slowly and watching it for what seemed like hours, and all this at 40 below while waiting for the bus.
