Ten years ago this Friday, I consider to be my 10 year anniversary back in the hobby. It was on that black Friday after Thanksgiving in 2001 that my uncle gave me his postwar trains that I also got to play with as a kid back in the mid 1970s. The engines included a 1956 Seaboard #601 NW-2 diesel switcher (which still runs and has been updated with LEDs in the front and cab, and Williams True last II horn) and 1959 AEC 57 Vulcan switcher (which no longer runs but I have a Postwar Celebration Series reissue). The operating freight cars included the 3662 milk car, yellow 3562-50 barrel car and blue 3424 Wabash brakeman car. The other cars included the maroon Lehigh Valley hopper car, black 3424 Evan auto loader, 6560 red Bucyrus crane car, 6362 orange Railway Truck car and 6119-50 work caboose. A 190 watt KW supplied the power. Operating accessories included the prewar gateman and the 494 rotating beacon (which is still on my layout) among others. Of course nothing worked when I got the trains, but soon I had things running.
In the last ten years, like many others on this forum, I have accumulated many more engines and an endless amount of freight and passenger cars. I will not list them as I would bore all of you. Most of my engines purchased in the last 7 years are command control ready. I have been using TMCC and DCS for 6 years.
Friday is also my younger daughter Danielle's 12th birthday, so it will be an inportant day for me.
Ten years is a long time. I then began thinking what has occurred in the hobby during that time. Certainly the last decade was dominated by two important things 1) several lawsuits which fortunately have all been resolved and 2) a big leap forward in electronics via command control and more realistic sounds. Sure, TrainMaster Command Control (TMCC) had already been around for several years. But DCS had not been released as of 2001, although MTH PS-2 locos had first appeared in 2000. Now we have PS3 in its infancy. It would not be until 2002 when DCS would finally be released. And Lionel's Legacy system would not appear until more than 5 years after DCS as replacement for TMCC. During that time as well, Lionel locos went from Railsounds (RS) 4, to RS 5.0, and now Legacy Railsounds, which are incredible.
Now we have Lionel Vision locomotives where the bell swings and is synchronized to the sound itself, steam whistle effect and steam blow down effect. The Lionel Vision Challenger released earlier this year even had a speaker in the
locomotive in addition to the one ordinarily found in the tender.
We also have more choices in entry level train sets than ever before. Presently Lionel, MTH, Atlas and Williams all offer entry level train sets. MTH and Lionel both offer premium train sets that do not come with track or transformer. Even RMT also offers a such a set. In 2001, Lionel and MTH offered starter sets. I do not know if the now defunct K-Line did.
For the last several years in the hobby, there has also been a rivalry between Lionel and MTH fans which was not present over 10 years ago. As long as hobbyists don't get too carried with the orange-blue versus purple-yellow stuff, I believe such competition between the manufacturers/importers is good for the hobby as it increases quality and keeps costs down. I'm sure many will disagree with this assessment, and such belief has merit. However, Lionel built some of its best trains of the post war era when it had healthy competiton from American Flyer. I believe the present Lionel MTH rivlary is similar to the Lionel American Flyer of the 1950s.
In addition to the trains themselves, the hobby has seen tremendous changes through the internet-namely the several on-line forums that have appeared including the best of them all, THIS ONE. Most of the people I have met in the hobby have been from the O Gauge On Line forum and have since become good friends. The forum certainly has extended the amount of knowledge available to all on many different topics. Just look at all the different sub-forums here.
Yes, the O gauge hobby has seen a lot of changes in the last 10 years. All you have to do is look at old issues of Classic Toy Trains (CTT) and O gauge railroading (OGR) to see them. In the future when model train historians analyze the period that included the first decade of the 21st century, they will conclude many changes occurred.
Erol Gurcan
Original Post
, and I had never dreamed that any kind of remote (command) control could improve upon a good ZW, and FasTrack was the thing that pushed me over the line (I always hated working with tubular track). I also had never heard of companies like MTH, Williams, Weaver, RMT, Industrial Rail, K-Line, and Atlas O (I was aware of Atlas HO). And the variety... don't even get me started on the variety of engines, rolling stock, and accessories! I would eventually discover this forum, train shows, and York, and would make many new friends along the way.
