Hello all,
I'm new to this hobby from Dayton, Ohio area. And new to really digging into the details of railroads, but have been fascinated since I was a kid. I've been reading these forums day and night for the past several weeks. I've tried to read many other model railroad forums, but this one has me constantly coming back for more because I think O Gauge is awesome. You regular posters all seem like family and I never see you tire of new guy after new guy asking the same old new guy questions.
My father in law gave me some fastrack and a New Haven C420 a few years ago and that led me into this forum. As a result, I once visited the home of Bob (Pennsylvania and Western Railroad). What a very nice man and very impressive layout. I'd never seen anything like that before. Kids and family prevented me from pursuing it much more. Until now my oldest boy joined the Navy and I have a spare 12X12 room to use.
My father in law recently passed away and left most all of his O-Gauge Lionel gear to me. This includes a ZW (275W) and a second (newer?) ZW that controls external transformers and 3 180W bricks. About 50 10"straights and 75 O36 curves (weird thing about 25% of these have black center rail), 6 switches. Two CAB 1's and TMCC gear, an awesome "library" of books, including the Wescott bench building book, and about 4 years of OGR, Classic Toy Trains, The Switcher, and The Lion Roars periodicals. I think my Father in law was a "Lionel or nothing" kind of guy I think. Not to offend. He lived in Connecticut much of his life and the nicer rolling stock is all New Haven colors.
I've always lived in Ohio except when I was 8, we moved to Hazard Ky for about 18 months, specifically a little place called Combs. My mother and all her family grew up there. We lived right on Route 80 across the street from a coal tipple. It wasn't more than 300 ft from our porch in plain sight. Around the clock I could watch trucks haul in coal, dump it onto conveyers that would carry it up into 100 car consists. For me, these are the most vivid and fascinating railroading memories I have. And that is what I would like to model in the space I have. My research tells me that the L&N had an important yard in Hazard and there are some railfan sites revealing there were countless tipples in that region. The appelachianmodelrailroading.com site has a lot of content I found inspiring. I never had any relatives in the railroading profession. But many were miners, heavy equipment operators in that area and have lots of insight to share about the coal industry.
Although I love the RCS and Gargraves track, I think there is plenty I can learn about benchbuilding, wiring, TMCC, scratchbuilding and so forth. I'm trying to control myself from going out and spending more until I understand thoroughly what I already have.
You'll probably see my posts mostly in the layout forums for a while.I try to look up a lot terms you all throw around but some things I just can't find. So look for "new guy needs help with lingo" posts.
First question. Does anyone know of any OGauge-centric clubs in the Dayton area. Most that I can find are N and HO.
I got a little carried away here.
Thanks for having such a great resource,
Tim
PS. I'm going to my first train show tomorrow. The Great Train Expo at Hara Arena in Dayton. I'll try to post a first impression.
