I got into trains just after the first of the year of 1989, that was 16 years ago. My only regret is that I didn’t get into it sooner. I wasted a lot of time watching TV and worrying about things I had no control of in the first place when I could have been building a nice layout and collecting locos and rolling stock ([V])…
Tracklayer
1953, enough said
I’ve been into model railroading ever since I can remember. My dad was interested in railroading and it rubbed off onto me. I can’t remember a time that I didn’t have some toy, or anything that wasn’t train related. Still remember my first train set…oh the memories.
zero
57 Years.
I started at 3 with a Lionel set. Got serious about scale at about 11 and switched to HO.
Jeff
[8D]
Since I was around 5, then I got into Hot Wheels for a while and went back to trains when I was about 8 or 9. I had gotten a Life-Like train set at a garage sale for $5, and the GP38 is still running good![:D]
Got ya all beat.
9 months.
That is about a billion fly years.
22 years, I’ve spent most of my life playing with trains, the rest i just wasted.
3 years, been doing the real thing for 21 years. Before that I used to ride the QNS&L a few times every summer when I was younger, my dad was an engineer on that road.
I’m not sure I have yet aceived the mystical title of “model railroader” yet, but I’ve been playing with trains since about 1962, when I was 4 years old, and got trains for Christmas.
Mouse, The Kid has ya beat there! He was born on December 22, 1991. I was working at The Georgia Hobby Center then. On December 24, as I was walking out the door to go home for Christmas, I got him a Lifellike Santa Fe set. I was able to give it to him for 3 Christmases before he knew he had a train set! [(-D]
After the third Christmas, we salvaged what was left of my old layout from my parents house, and set about rebuilding it here. And we are still at it! [:D]
Rotor
My folks bought a Hornby trainset when I was a kid in the late 50’s in Australia
My brother r5eturned from Vietnam and began modelling in the early 80’s
I saw a beutiful SP brass GP 7 in a market in Paris, I bought it for him and he never got it.
I now model Santa Fe, late 50’s early 60’s so I can have late steam and early diesel and am on my 5th layout.
I love it
I know the feeling tigerstripe, I know the feeling([V])…
Tracklayer
Just about all my life, and I’m 57 now.
Darrell, old and quiet…for now
I can recall being entranced by steam locomotives near Sudbury, ON, in the mid 50’s. My love affair with steam began then, and was thankfully prolongued by living in the Andes @ 15,000 feet during the next 9 years. The mining company used steam well into the 60’s. Then, other things happened, and I did not rekindle my love for trains until just this past January. I wonder what a real 2-8-0 cost in 1960 dollars? Probably not much more than what I have invested in my trains today, ignoring the inflation.
Wow!.. 9 months. Back when I’d only been into it 9 months I had it bad. That was all I wanted to think about, talk about, read about and do. I was constantly running back and forth to the hobby shops in the city to buy either locos, rolling stock or items for my layout. But alas, it all finally began to tapper off after about 15 years… Now instead of three trips to the hobby shop a week, it’s just two (I wish [:p]).
Tracklayer
11 years o gauge and 2 years ho.
I had a Lionel train set before this, but I built my first HO kit when I was 12 years old (in 1950…), and shortly after, I built my first lokey (a Varney “Little Joe” Dockside).
Ahhh, memories…
First Train set inthe late 70’s, finished secondary school, trains mia until the mid 90’s when I moved to the middle of nowhere (Alice Springs) and started gathering equipment,parts and kits[:D][swg]
1974 I got serios and in Nov 1976 the WEUSANDCORR was established and is still running as the branchline on my new C&NW layout