I ran across some pictures of my first layout the other day & it really took me back. It was over 50 years ago & it was pitiful. It was on a piece of plywood 4x8,I t had 1 engine , a dummy athearn geep unit & about 6 cars. Its a good thing my engine didnt run cause the curves were about 7 inch radius. Couldnt run an engine anyway cause I didnt have a power pack. Lighting was a table lamp, scenery consisted of plaster over wire,dyed sawdust,telephone poles,piles of gravel,a few toy trucks matchbox?,that was about it. It looked like a train layout. I had bought model railroader magazines & that got me hooked. Well since those days I have advanced. I now have 7 cars!!! Just kidding,I have 2 layouts ,one ho & one n scale. Remember, when you first get married you dont have a lot of money,at least I didnt. My career interupted my model train hobby & then in about 1968 I was reading about n scale trains. I didnt have a lot of space at the time & it seemed the way to go. I bought a rapido baldwin switcher set with power pack & I was off & running. Next I tried ho scale ,I loved it as much as n scale so I modeled both. Its funny how you try to make things more realistic,I remember cutting the doors on an atlas n scale car so it would have an open door. I even tried to put sound in a car, without success. The hobby has come a long way since those early years & I still love the hobby as much as I ever did. Looking over my layouts today I see the progress I have made thru the years & it makes me feel good. The layouts are not perfect but they operate & give me much satisfaction every day I run trains. At one time I tried to collect all the roadnames that kd offered in n scale box cars but they kept releasing new ones & after 400 cars I gave up trying . I wish I had kept those cars but I traded or sold them many years ago. We learn & grow in this hobby. Before you get rid of those engines or cars,think about it a long time cause 20 years from now you might want
It was very much like some plywood on top of a table with a Snap Track overlay. Wiring was two wires between the power pack and track. Switches (4, as I recall) relied on the little sliding tab for manual activation. There was no scenery and none was contemplated at the time. There were a few Revell/Atlas building plopped where they looked appropriate. Plus one scratchbuilt shed.
Only “claim to fame” was that there was a 22" radius outer loop that would accept a 4-8-4. And did.
You asked.
Ed
My first layout was a joint venture at 8 years old with my father in our basement. A Lionel 0-27 2-6-2 with 3 cars and a caboose on a 4’ x 8’ plywood main section with the track curving onto a 12” wall shelf down one wall turning onto a second 12” wall shelf to a 4’ x 4’ plywood with a return loop forming a large curved dog-bone. A total of about 120’ of O gauge three rail. We used real Lionel curved sections and my dad’s home brew rails for straight track.
It was during WWII and track was hard to come by so my dad had a friend make a jig/die from a 2” x 3” x 10” steel bar along with a T bar to make rails. We would cut open empty food cans and lay the tin over the “die” and with a couple of good whacks with a hammer and a bit of cleanup with tin snips we made 10” rails compatible with the Lionel track. My dad made a track laying gauge from a 2 x 4 and he secured the rails to the plywood and shelving with carpet tacks. I was in hog heaven!
That was my entry into model railroading in 1945/46. My current and last layout is my forth, I’ll be lucky if it’s finished before I’m pushing up grass.
Mel, I can relate to much of what you said. My first train was a marx 027 steamer but it ran on the rug in the living room. Didnt get my first layout though til 1968 on plywood base. Glad I saved the pictures.[;)]
I simply had one of those “Life Like Sets’” with that power loc track.
I built “the rr that grows” in 1973 just got it done and had to move. Took the legs off and put it in the u-haul and took off. Set in up in the new house and we used it for 4-5 yrs. I just built a 12x7 in my shop at 76 yrs. Hope to use it for a good while.
My very first layout was built on a piece of plywood and folded up against the side wall of the garage. I was very young, 6-7 years old. My dad built it. I have no pictures and do not remember much about it.
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I do remember that my best locomotive was a Canadian Pacific F unit. It ran great and all my other locomotives just sat on the shelf. The first lesson I had in model railroading was to buy quality over quantity.
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-Kevin
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Mine was O-guage Lionel on a 4x8 plywood sheet. I later expanded it with another 4x8 in an L.
My first layout, was built by my dad. It was a 4 x 6 over and under. I was 8. My dad made the layout in his work shed and put it right next to the Christmas tree Christmas morning. Spent all of Christmas vacation running trains. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures. It was 32 years ago!
My first layout was a Snap track 4’x6’ plan from the Blue Atlas plan booklet back in the late 50s / early 60s. It went around to a crossing and internal loop then back to the outside. I recall it had a siding and a short passing track perhaps.
The rolling stock started with a B&O F unit, perhaps a Tyco, or an Athearn rubber band drive. A Varney switcher got added, someone’s 0-6-0 and a 4-4-2. I wish someone would make a 4-4-2 today. Cars were Athearn kits.
The layout was build with hand tools…a hand drill for the screws, a miter saw box, etc. I recall getting blisters on my hands screwing in the screws.
A 4x8 sheet of plywood that my father and grandfather painted bright green with white roads. Some buildings and a loop of 3 rail track. A steam engine and some freight cars.
They took it down and packed it up for more room when my younger brother was born.
My very first layout was 62 years ago and the only thing I can remember about was the fact is was American Flyer S gauge.My second layout is a little easier to remember because my step dad and myself taught our selves to scratch build the buildings on it.They were not very fancy but they sure were fun to build.We went through a lot of Cherrios and Kelloggs Cornflake boxes.[:)]
I guess it depends on the meaning of ‘your’. My first layout was my dad’s. It was a Lionel 027 3-rail round the Christmas tree. Setting it up was a holiday tradition. (Another holiday tradition was a Dickens Village on the dining room sideboard, but that’s another issue.)
My second layout was also my dad’s. A little bitty half-size HO thing. On 4x8 plywood, on saw horses, in the garage. When I was five or six. A B&O steamer and a dozen or so freight cars. My brother and I called it the Beans and Onion railroad.
Robert
My first layout was slot cars and trains on a piece of plywood on top of a pair of saw horses in the garage. It grew onto a kiddies’ pool table and other pieces of old furniture and had a section of open grid and more plywood. It had very steep grade but the trains were very short so it wasn’t a problem. It had a locomotive shortage. It had mostly Tyco cars. It had scenery made from this stuff you mixed with water and spread over wire screen. It already was the color of dirt so no painting was required. It had sections of paper grass sheets. It only had a handful of trees so most of the forest was clear cut or had burned and had tree trunks made from used wooden match sticks. Hey, I was an kid with no budget at all. The snow is the same canned stuff you spray on your Christmas tree.
I suppose this is a picture my ‘first’ layout. It was my Dads. What I remember most about it was the control panel that had dozens of switches and the layout took up the entire basement. When I was 9 or 10, my Dad, with my help [:-^], built a 10’x5’ modified figure eight layout. This is where I learned to spike track and solder wires. I also learned how messy plaster over window screen was. We had that layout until I got drafted and my Mother sold it. I had a lot of hours of fun on that layout.
Great to read about all the layouts,I appreciate it.
For Christmas around 1960 I received an American Flyer over-and-under figure 8 trainset. It had a steam loco although I can’t remember the wheel arrangement. It had a box car, tank car, gondola, and caboose. I ran the heck out of it although I never mounted it on plywood. A few years later my brother and I went halvsies on a used 4x8 HO layout. The track plan was a triple oval with the two inner ovals joining together for a shorth stretch on one side of the layout. There was a mountain on one end that all the ovals went through. It was constructed of screen with some type of ground material over the top. Not sure what it was but over time it began to crumble away. The inner oval had a spur track to what was supposed to be a mine which was nothing more than a short tunnel built into the mountainside. It was the only track that had a grade on it. There was also a spur to an enginehouse which housed a dummy F-unit. There were three operating locos, a UP switcher, some sort of steam switcher, and the Athearn rubber band drive switcher. There were a couple of houses on the layout, a railroad tower, and on the mountain side there was a mill with a stream that ran down the mountain, between the inner and outer ovals to a small pond at the other end of the layout. Since the layout was on a flat sheet of plywood, a viaduct had been built to carry the stream to the pond. A small electric motor had been installed in the mill house to turn the water wheel. When turned on, it spun around like a fan. I remember one thing I learned form that layout. I learned how to curse.
My very first layout was an oval of Lionel 027 track with a passing siding at one end (2 turnouts plus 180 degrees of curved sections) on the living room rug. When not in use it hung on a hook on the back of my bedroom door.
Since it was assembled when I was five months old I didn’t have much input to its design. Later (about a year later) I got pretty good at running it. Re-railing rolling stock taught me hand-eye coordination at an early age…
Chuck (Modeling Central Japan in September, 1964)
I built my very first layout at the age of 11, without any help from an adult. It was a simple layout, using Marklin´s infamous tinplate track on rubber mounts to keep the noise level down. The track plan was nothing but an oval and a station with a passing siding and two spurs leading to local industries and one spur leading up a mountain. Scenery was the typical hardshell construction of the 1960´s and the ground cover was made from colored sawdust.
Although - at least from today´s perspective - it was not a well planned and well built layut, it worked and i was very proud´having built it without any help.
It lasted only for a couple of years before I dismantled it and sold all my Marklin stuff - much to my regret today.