What were HO layouts like in the 50’s , 60’s , and 70’s ?
In the 50’s it was amazing if one ran. Most power was extremely small - switchers, 4-4-0’s etc. and f units and brass rail on fiber ties. Three pole open frame motors that drew close to an amp. The 60’s started a refinement of equipment and detail.
It was tough…after we walked home in the hot blazing summer yet somehow snowing uphill climb, we had to carve wooden F units from hickory. We couldn’t afford track at all and the sound system was us making the noise.
Much of what Antonio said is the same as my experience in the 70s. The first step from Tyco most of us made was to Athearn blue box…which is why alot of the late 30’s to 50’s guys still hold the blue boxes in high regard. If a unit wasn’t commercially available…there was an article to kitbash one from Athearn shells…SD40-2s and Tunnel motors all done the hard way…
Carved?..
…You were lucky…
After walking home across the surface of the sun desert to our tin shack,
we had to CHEW our train out of old pieces of lumber, spitting out the rusty nails…
The train noises was ol’ dad passed out on the floor after his nightly exercises of thrashing us kids about with his empty whiskey bottle…
(nod,nod,wink,wink to Mr. Python)
My first layout, the Tidewater Central from MR, used steel rail on fibre ties. The track was manufactured by Atlas. Most of my cars were either Varney or Howell Day (Red Ball) kits with cardboard sides. My best cars were Silver Streak wood kits. I had some Globe/Athearn wood core metal kits as well. They all ran on Central Valley or Walthers sprung metal trucks. My first HO locomotive was a Mantua Mike followed by a Varney Dockside and a Mantua “Little Six.” These locomotives were true kits in every sense of the word, completely lacking in any real detail, but they were all good runners. My couplers? Baker automatics! My train control was a Variac 120 volt variable transformer supplying a step down transformer that sent a maximum 12 volts to the track. Things have improved greatly over the years, but make no mistake about it, model railroading was, is and forever will be fun!
Tom
When I started in 72, my first layout was a 4x8 sheet of plywood. I used brass turnouts and sectional track because they were cheaper than nickel silver. I had a Tyco Prairie and a Tyco Ten Wheeler that ran pretty good. Started with Tyco cars and moved up to Athearn and MDC/Roundhouse. All my first buildings were Atlas. I used Atlas block controlers. Then I started buying craftsman kits - LaBelle and Central Valley. These were wood and metal. In 73, I splurged and built a Bowser K4 Pacific which I still have even though I left HO in 78. All in all it was a lot of fun. And it is still alot of fun, even though I’m in S scale now.
Enjoy
Paul
we had to CHEW our train out of old pieces
of lumber, spitting out the rusty nails…
Luxury! We had to chew our trains out of rocks and then only after we got up at 2 in the morning 1/2 an hour before we went to bed having had to lick road clean with tongue and walk 10 miles to school in blinding snowstorms only to get thrashed within an inch of our lives…if we were lucky.
You try and tell the kids today…
All seriousness aside;
'40’s I played with my Grandads clockwork wind up Hornby 0 gauge, but it got put back in it’s box after.
'50’s after Hornby 00 3 rail ‘set up and run’ then a Triang 2 rail on a sheet of plywood. I also had a Lone Star 000.
'60’s Trix TT, first succesful real attempt to get away from a train set.
No H0 or non-Brit until I got to Canada.
I’m currently finding more and more contentment in just watching my trains go by much as I did in the '40’s. Should I be scared ?
I’m not old enough (born in early '80s) to have experienced those decades, but I do have dozens of issues of MR from the '50, '60s and '70s. From what I gather:
- Brass locomotives used to be cheap (even for that time),
- early brass didn’t run very well,
- there were lots of generic locomotives,
- rolling stock & locomotives were painted incorrect schemes and schemes that never happened
- almost everything had huge flanges
- the “dark ages” of model railroading sucked
Bad motors, rubber bands or springs in the drivetrain, ugly truck mounted NMRA couplers. The new fangled power pack may have had tranistors.
Most cars came in up to 12 roadnames. They would always be one of the major class 1’s. UP-ATSF-GN-SP in the West. PRR-NYC-B&O in the East. Milw-CB&Q-MP-Sou- midwest.
THere’s a great column in RMC that covers this subject. Probably the biggest change is the way large department stores had a complete train section. Even mass marketers like Sears and Woolworths carried trains. You could get model kits in toy stores like ToysRus or Kbee.
Model railroading in the 60s and 70s was quite enjoyable for me. Building layouts with whatever scrap lumber I could find and atlas sectional track. I even built one on an old oak dining table (probably worth a fortune today). I was so poor I couldn’t even afford an Athearn locomotive so I learned how to improve the “junk” I had and learned to build from scratch. Necessity is the mother of invention, so they say.
For those that didn’t experience those years I suppose it would seem to have sucked but those of use who had the pleasure to live those days will most likely tell you otherwise.
Whether or not brass locomotives were cheap is definitely a matter of perspective. Certainly, 40 years ago you could find a brass locomotive for $30-40 brand new, but 40 years ago $30-40 would be a month’s rent for a studio apartment…meanwhile, in 2004, check studio apartment prices and hey, they’re pretty close to the price of new brass locomotives.
I’m old enough to remember model railroading in the 70’s as a kid–indeed, every toy store at least had a couple of train sets, and even many drug stores and some hardware stores would often carry a few kits, if not their own model railroad section. It was a bit more of a widespread hobby then, I suppose, as was model building in general. Heck, my junior high school offered a model-building class as an elective.
Model railroading has never been a poor man’s hobby. The only exception to this has been for those willing to build a lot of things from scratch, or make do with toy-train quality stuff (like the folks who helped found the hobby during the Depression and WWII.)
And yes, we’re pretty darned spoiled now when it comes to abundance of road names, different prototypes, and relative levels of accuracy.
If you want a little taste of 1950’s style model railroading, try this–scratchbuild a structure using only wood and cardstock. Maybe a couple of metal castings, and perhaps some celluloid for windows. No styrene sheet, no plastic window castings. It’s not really all that hard–it just requires a bit more patience. If you want to up the challenge a bit, try using household products wherever possible–shoe polish for weathering, bits of coffee stirrer instead of brass rod, and so on. You’ll get a good idea of what it was like–and gain skills that you’ll be able to use elsewhere, even on the latest super-duper Walthers plastic wonder kit…
You can even cheat and build an Alpine Division kit–these are copies of the old Suydam structure kits, pre-cut, mostly made from cardstock, wood, sheet aluminum
Ahhhhh, thinking back.[8D] I remember the hum of a Lionel HO powerpack, the smell of ozone from a set of Varney F units, cleaning brass track constantly, and actually believing nothing could run better than my Tyco 430 Century.
Paper mache’ mountains covered with Lichen, trees by (notso) Life-Like.
Scary huh? [:0]
50’s - wind-up Lionel on silver colored track.
60’s - cars and motorcycles.
70’s - hot girls and fast cars - hmmm or was that fast girls and hot cars, can’t remember.
80’s - HO on a 4x8 table layout.
Most layouts were “bowl of spaghetti” See the book 101 Trackplans.
There was less prototype modeling. Locos and cars were more generic. Most modelers made do with what was available. Santa Fe F7’s would head the passenger train of Pennsyvania cars, the freight might be hauled by an 1890’2 4-6-0, and a B&O docksider would do the switching.
Overall equipment, structures and scenery were less detailed.
The hoods on Athearn Geeps were wider than scale to accomodate the motors…
It was a lot of fun to be a model railroader (and still is)
I just remember the undersides of some larger layouts being an unbeleiveble tangle of wires.
My brother and I shared an American Flyer set. It had a Pennsy K-4 Pacific and lighted caboose. Some of the cars where electrically operated and onloaded cars or logs. No structures kits where available in S at that time, so we just used 0 gauge. The big structure manufacturer was “Plasticville” which is Bachmann, now. This layout was on a 4X8 3/4" plywood table. The grass was green paint, the roads black. A couple years later, 1958-60, I got a Tyco HO set. The set came with Tyco’s 0-4-0 Booster and my mom bought me a Varney Docksider from a neighbor kid. I still have the Docksider and for it’s size, will out-pull anything I have now. I started on a couple HO layouts, but never finished any. One was built with a neighbor kid and we used his dad’s Tru-Track and rail for track. His Dad must have gotten into HO in the 40s sometime. He also had Roundhouse’s classic 0-6-0 switcher made from blackened metal. I didn’t know any boys, whom did not have some sort of train set, maybe two.
Back in the 50’s my cousin and I had very nice lionel layouts. We still have them packed away.
I wasn’t allowed to play with my railroad until after walking back from school, uphill both ways, natch. I had to finish all my homework and do my father’s business reports before being sent out to muck out the stables. After doing that and slopping the hogs I had to station myself in a good spot and beg for money and food from passers by. At home I got thrashed for not begging enough money. Dad took the money I did have and bought booze, not food. We were starving.
At night we were too poor to have an extension cord for the lamp by the train set so my parents made me hold one end of the lamp cord in one hand and put two fingers of the other hand into the wall socket. When dad wanted the loco. whistle to sound he just upped the current. I was told my screaming sounded quite whistle prototypical.
Seriously the Lionel setup was very nice. What bothers me is that my father was a concert pianist and symphony conductor without a mechanical brain in his body yet he built the bench work and set the whole thing up and I’m wracking my brain on how to get our HO up and running.
raymar, you have a deep understanding of how the olden days were! Reading your story brought tears to my eyes! These kids now days just don’t understand how hard life was back then. You have helped them undersand this! maybe they will respect us now!
My first train was an N gauge set. Back in the late sixties Aurora came out with “Postage Stamp trains”. Thy were made by Trix and Aurora packaged them under their name. I remember them being very expensive at the time. N gauge was in it’s infantsy. 7 1/2’ radius curves were included in the set and this for a passenger train! The overhang around the curves was crazy. My local hobby shop was well stocked though. In fact I think the late 60’s into the 70’s the train hobby was booming. In Elmhurst, IL where I grew up there were two train clubs with layouts open to the public. I can remember the “Salt Creek Model Railroad club” had open house every friday night. It would be packed with people. My favorite thing on the layout was a sausage factory with a sign that read “Our Wurst is our Best”.
Paul the Painter
Simpler…different…but everything in life was simpler, and different than now.
You know, autos made of steel…paint and gasoline made with lead…heck, my first MRR “mountain” had plaster with asbestos shorts mixed in ![:0]
For a young person, which I can vaguely remember being, in the 40’s & 50’s…there was a greater fascination for trains, partly because trains were still EVERYWHERE in our real world, and I’m sure partly because model trains had a number of interesting mechanical attributes that other toys and games did not.[8D]
Trains had inherently more “play value” than Meccano / Erector sets, static airplane models, lead soldiers, and Monopoly games.[:D]
With no video games,computers, cellphones, and very little TV / Radio choices [if any], model trains filled far more than a “niche” interest amongst the young, and that’s why the hobby achieved the huge growth numbers it did from the 1940’s to the 1970’s…the “old-timers” of the current hobby population, came from those simpler times…Many, or most of us, are not Luddites in terms of modern methods, but still have rather fond memories of “the way we were”.[;)][;)]
regards
Mike