I was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling. So what came first for you? Models or watching the real thing?
Considering real trains came along before models of any real usable type, railfanning seems the logical answer. Very likely you could watch trains before there was a practical ability to model them, unless carving a train from a piece of wood constitutes “modeling”. I suppose techincally it does, but not in the modern sense.
I actually meant for you as an individual. I edited my post to clarify. I am rather new to the hobby. Took my first real train ride this past summer and have been fascinated since. I do some track-side watching at least once a week. My children are showing interest in model trains, hence my entrance into the hobby.
I was a toddler when my dad took me to the train station to watch trains, so I guess railfanning came before model railroading. I got my first train set aged 7.
I was 8 when I got my first train for Christmas 1945. Don’t know for sure but I don’t think I saw a train until my teens when the company my father worked for transferred him to El Paso in 1949. The company arranged for my mother brother and I to ride the UP City of Los Angeles from Salt Lake City to LA and the SP Golden State to El Paso.
The City of Los Angeles got stuck in snow on Donner Pass (December 21, 1949) for 16 hours, memorable moment for a teen.
Mel
My Model Railroad
http://melvineperry.blogspot.com/
Bakersfield, California
I’m beginning to realize that aging
I remember watching trains (steam and diesel) while playing on the front veranda at the age of three…they ran past our house, on an elevated right-of-way, literally right across the street.
I discovered HO (it might have been OO) at the age of five, when a classmate’s older brother brought his train set over and set it up on our livingroom floor. I don’t recall the maker, but it was in a beautiful lacquered wooden case, with a colourful steam locomotive and, as I recall, very nicely-detailed passenger coaches. I can’t comment with certainty on its origin - may have been German or British, or possibly Japanese, as the classmate’s family was of Japanese origin.
I got my own HO at the age of nine: an ABBA set of Globe F7s (one powered) and an assortment of freight cars…Varney (metal and plastic), Athearn (metal), MDC and Authenticast (metal), and a Silver Streak caboose (wood and metal). Kadee K-type coupers on all, and working rubber diaphragms between the diesels. Some of those freight cars are still in service on my current layout.
Wayne
When I was very little, my parents dragged me to the local train station to see the Amtrak. A couple years later I saw the ADK&LC layout at the local train show, but didn’t start playing with model trains until about 8. Now I drag my parents to the station.
Model railroading came first.
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I grew up in Gainesville, Florida. Not much railfanning for a kid there.
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-Kevin
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Small world! I was born in Gainesville, Florida, but spent the first few years of my childhood in Ocala, Florida. As for the topic at hand, I got into trains through Thomas the Tank Engine, and got my first Lionel for Christmas shortly there after when I was 5? I think. I’m not sure when I got my first HO scale set, but I’ve been hooked on that scale and model railroading ever since.
In my personal case, that statement is completely incorrect, which I suppose by nature of the statement makes it kind of wrong.
I‘d say I definitely started as a modeler (using the term loosely… let’s say modeler=enjoying running trains) and then as I started looking into the prototypes more I became what you might call a railfan. I would still consider myself a modeler first and then a railfan.
On the flip side I do know there are plenty of rail fans not involved in the model8ng aspect of the hobby. Still there is ALOT of overlap between the two!
Pretty sure it was models - my parents had a large (room size) layout in what ended up being my room, so it all had to come down, but a loop was set up under the tree every Christmas. I have an 8mm silent movie of me, less than age 2, running the train. The earliest evidence I have of me interacting with a real train wasn;t until 2 years later when I went to Strasburg for the first time. Beside Stransburg and other tourist lines, the only palce I saw real trains as a youngster was at the end of the street my grandparents lived on, on the other side of a high mesh fence was where completed steel handling cars from the Treadwell Corporation were stored and picked up by the Lehigh Valley on the Easton and Northern branch. And the Summer before I started kindergarten, we camped at Hersheypark, and at the end of the road was the Reading main to Harrisburg, which I would run down to and watch the trains when I heard them.
–Randy
Both at almost the same time for me. The house I spent the first 4 years of my life, was right next to the East Troy Electric Railroad.
The next Christmas in this same house, my dad gave me my first train set, a Marx.
Mike.
If by railfanning you mean the casual oservation of trains as they pass by, then that came first. And I still stop to watch a train pass by.
OTOH if we’re talking about railfanning as hobby where one seeks out trains to observe; buys book and guides to be able to identify locomotives, cars, signals, etc.; keeps a record of locomotives observed; takes pictures of railroads; etc. then I’m not a railfan.
I do like reading about railroads and their history.
For me, model railroading as a hobby started when I was 22. I had trains as a child. But I wouldn’t say it was a hobby as I liked racing them with my brothers trains and staging collisions.
Paul
Your parents let you play on a Veranda?? Lucky kid! [(-D]
Well, that’s what it was called, although in some places it would be a “porch” or maybe a “stoop”.
The one on the side of the house, where hoboes would sometimes come looking for something to eat, was “the stoop”. My Mother would give them a sandwich and a glass or milk or water, but I wasn’t allowed to be outside when one was around.
Here’s half of the house, with its mirror-image other-half, to the left, already torn down…
Next to that was Mr. Donelly’s barber shop - one chair in the front room of the house, and next door to that was Queen Victoria Public School, an impressive brick structure from that earlier era. It had been torn down before I thought to take a photo. I do have a scan of a postcard featuring it, but can’t locate it at the moment.
The grey structure to the right was the fish & chip shop, (now a hairdresser’s place, I think) but for me it was even more of a lure than the variety store across the corner from it, where there wer
For me, modeling clearly came first. My father set up a very elaborate Christmas garden/train layout going back to when I was only two or three.
Set up permenantly as soon as we had a house with a basement, that layout was passed to me at about age 10.
We lived in the rural suburbs and there was little in the way of real trains to see, except on various trips to Baltimore.
We did have the little Baltimore & Annapolis short line, which ran one or two short trains a week, and could be seen if we happened to be near the tracks in Severna Park.
But that operation had pretty much stopped by the time I was old enough to get around on my own.
As for railfanning now, I’m not one. CSX (ex B&O mainline) and AMTRAK (ex PRR mainline) are both near my home here in northeastern Maryland, and I pass by, cross over/under them all the time. I can’t say I make much effort to watch the trains.
My modeling interests are in a time before I was born, 1954. I have not kept up with the details of modern railroading, I doubt I could correctly identify any of the locos I see.
It really does not interest me, and my spare time for hobby related activities is currently limited, I’m not going to spend time on stuff that would take away from my modeling time. Maybe some day, not today.
The only “railfanning” I do, is to travel to Strasburg PA, less than an hour from my home, and ride and watch the historic trains there. Because it is so close, I am typically there three or four times a year, and have been known to just go and sit and watch trains for several hours.
In the peak season, about 10 months of the year, Strasburg runs all day, every day, seven days a week, trains every hour, sometimes every 1/2 hour from 9am to 5 or 6pm. Historic steam, pulling historic cars, on a real schedule. And steam moving real freight, as they are also provide local team track operation.
Sheldon
It started with the models for me. We have video of when my dad put a train around the Christmas tree (I was about 6 months old), and my focus was totally on the train. After that, I mostly played with the battery operated toy trains my brother had lost interest in until I finally got some nicer stuff. I think I was 5 or 6 when I got my first N scale model (Bachmann PCC trolley), and eventually moved to HO.
Because of where I grew up, I didn’t have much exposure to real trains. NS and Amtrak come through here, but I was too far away to just go out and watch them. What I saw was mostly in books and on TV, and my internet access while growing up was poor at best.
In my case both… My dad was a modeler and railfan so,I started both hobbies early in life. I started my solo railfan trips when I was seven on my Schwinn bicycle with a Kodak camera…That was in 1955.
Thankfully the Columbus(Oh) Union Station and PRR’s Cleveland Ave yard was a few city blocks away. I saved my lunch money and allowence to buy film.
I started out on the big stuff but models came along not much later. Here I am on C&O Berkshire 2707 at the Brookside Zoo Park in Cleveland in my dad’s arms:
April_RR_C&O2707 by Edmund, on Flickr
Maybe two years later we had a rudimentary HO layout on a piece of 4 x 8 plywood painted green.
Cheers, Ed
Grew up next to the CNW line and a couple blocks from the EJ&E in West Chicago Illinois, so trains were always just there. Models definitely came first for me with my first train set around kindergarten.
When I re-entered the hobby a couple years ago, it was almost simultaneous that I started acquiring trains and taking photographs of the real thing. Even now I’m not a serious railfan but I take alot of pictures of trains.