Your path to, through, out of, and back into model railroading?

OK I'm in. Probably a million stories to follow.

Like many of us, my father got me started in trains. He had a couple of tin plate sets that he used to set up at Christmas. He thought that HO would be better for me so we built my first layout when I was 8 years old. A second bigger layout followed when I was in my teens that survived until my parents sold our house and moved when I was 18. I stepped away from modeling through my 20's but still put a loop of track under the tree every Christmas.

College, work, marriage, family for the next bunch of years. Again- still kept the embers hot but no permanent layout. My daughter was not really interested in trains but when my son came along I thought he would enjoy them. Thomas was king and we amassed a large collection of the plastic track and the battery op trains. He liked them but I think I was more interested than he was.

A few years ago my in-laws were going through some boxes and found some tin plate cars and gateman's shanty. That was it I was hooked again. In the past three years I've built a small 4X8 layout (all the landlord will allow), and built a modest collection of trains, etc. I can say that I am hooked once again and will continue to do this as long as the good lord let's me.

Bob

I grew up in a small town in western Massachusetts that had trains rumbling through on a regular basis and was enthralled by them, but my family could not afford to buy me a model train set. When I was about 10 or 11 years old, I entered a contest for a model railroad by filling out and sending in a cut-out panel on a box of cereal, never thinking I could win and soon forgot about it. Lo and behold, about 6 months later a brand new American Frontiersman set arrived at our door with a letter stating that I was one of the winners and, from that point on, I was hooked.

In my mid-teens, trains gave way to cars and girls and then a family and business, but I never lost the passion I had for trains. I now have grandchildren and I believe that, in today's world, there are so many more distractions for kids to easily lose their way than when we grew up, that it's critical for children to have something to focus on and keep them out of trouble. It could be sports or dancing or music or scouts or whatever, but there needs to be something they love and can help keep them on the straight and narrow. I chose to try and pass on my passion for model railroading as something they could focus on as they grow up and got back into the hobby a few years ago after a 50 year absence and got each of my grandkids involved with my layout and helped them build a layout of their own and I believe model railroading will stick with them and help keep them away from the less-than-desirable distractions that are out there.  At least, it will give them a solid foundation and a fighting chance.

I heard about OGR from a friend and appreciate the camaraderie and knowledge that the Forum provides.

Glad you asked. (I guess we all would be.)

...the interest/love affair started here, at my parents' Christmas layout...

...and reinforced when shopping, as a child, with parents in hometown with trains cutting across the main drag in McKeesport, PA...

...further underscored while working at a steel mill in our hometown with trains everywhere...

..and seeing many train-related and steel mill-related sights almost daily...

..long after college, and my Manhattan years, then, teaching in Europe, and teaching 8 - 12th grades in the USA , I found myself, as a newly-wed, having the time, means, space, and wifely (key to success and fun, for me) enthusiasm for our having a layout in the basement for us and guests to enjoy...FrankM

Still asking myself these questions.  If anything, my dad was hostile to the railroad (and still is) so it wasn't him.  No model trains around the house.  However, I did grow up one house away from Missouri Pacific tracks in St. Louis County.  There was even a siding for the Busch family estate (Grant's Farm) where they dropped cars.  As kids we used to go under empty hopper cars, slide open the doors, and climb up into them.  Or if there was a slow moving train, we'd grab on and ride it for a mile or so (but then you have a long walk home).  So maybe I was always fascinated by real trains and didn't even realize it?  Fast forward to this time last year when I decided, at age 45, to buy a LionChief Polar Express w/ Bluetooth set.  Not even a year later I have Legacy engines on preorder, built my first layout, and have spent way too much on Standard Gauge.  I didn't even know Standard Gauge existed a year ago.  I'm going to stop thinking about this now and go back to enjoying the ride. 

During the late 40's and through the 1950's electric trains were considered the high technology items of the day. My dad purchased a 2046 O27 set for under the Christmas tree that was eventually handed over to me. Trains became my interest and from age 6 or 7 I began to set them up with dad and that's where the layout interest began. Around age 9 or 10 I saved up enough money to buy a 5" x 9' ping pong size plywood sheet and thus with enough track and one set of switches my permanent layout began. Since trains were sold nearly everywhere all my modest birthday money was spent on accessories. The layout grew and dad purchased a ZW  around 1958. The layout was set up for a month or so every December. The train interest continued until my early years of high school and then everything was mothballed and this lasted all through my college years when the interest shifted to a rock band and girls. When I finally married and moved to NJ in 1976 I took my trains with me and set up the layout again in the basement of the duplex home that we rented. By coincidence my wife met a girl at work who's husband John was a train collector. He told me some big train shows were going on in Wayne, NJ at the firehouse and that Lionel was still in business. One Saturday morning he drove us up there and the train buying binge began. . Since we didn't have smart phones, computers and the tech gadgets of today my spare time hobby provided the ideal departure form the stresses of everyday life. When we finally built a home and raised a family my purchases just kept accumulating on the shelves in the basement. In 2003 my wife passed away at age 50 and I needed to have a more active hobby to keep going.  The following year I met my current wife and we were married a year later. The kids were soon out of the house ( my wife didn't have any children of her own) and since she was on the night shift at the hospital the house was quiet during the evening hours so there was the ideal time to start building structures and the seeds of my new 28' x 15' layout were planted. The layout is now 95% complete and every winter as we all move indoors up here in NJ it becomes my primary hobby. Today I am an operator and my goal of building my dream layout has been met. Thank the Lord.

AMCDave, OMG, you were a cool kid! Good lookin', and you had your own train, cowboy cap-gun, and (if I am seeing correctly) a Tonka truck, no less ! AND check out that personality! You must have been the best-liked kid in the neighborhood, especially if you shared your stuff .

FrankM

RSJB18 is probably right -- a million or so replies will follow.  Here's mine.

I can't remember a time when I wasn't interested in railroads.  I was born in 1948 in the Pennsylvania coal town of Mount Carmel, which had a strong railroad presence (PRR, RDG, Erie) for many years.  Was that an influence?  Maybe, but I was pretty young, so I'm not sure. My grandfather was an early railroad hobbyist, and built a Christmas platform for his three daughters (my mother and her two sisters) each year.  I saw that layout in its latter-day years (Granddad died in 1951), and I can just barely remember being fascinated by it.

Then about a year later, my parents moved to Bloomsburg, PA, where my father was a student.  Bloomsburg was just across the (Susquehanna) river from the PRR line, and the town itself was served by the Reading and the DL&W.  That was the first real-world railroading I can actually remember.  My mother tells me that I was fascinated by trains even then.

It was in 1951, our last year in Bloomsburg, that Santa brought me my first railroad model.  As regular readers of this forum have heard many times before, it was a Lionel Korean-War-era 2026, with four rather low-end freight cars.

Finally, in 1952, we moved to Huntingdon, PA, where Dad got the teaching job he would have for the next 30-odd years.  It was that first year in Huntingdon that he built our Christmas train platform.  It was only 4x8, but my lord, how big it seemed to four-year-old me!

Lionel and Marx accessories appeared on that platform every Christmas, though we were pretty short on cash in those days, and it was nothing very high-end.  Each Fall, I would pore over the Lionel catalog (how I wish I had saved them all!) with the intensity of a Talmudic scholar, hypnotized by Lionel's colorful offerings.

At the same time, since Huntingdon was on the PRR 4-track main line, my friends and I would spend a lot of time down at the station, watching the immensely long mixed freights passing through every fifteen or twenty minutes.  The passenger trains were even more fascinating, and they contributed heavily to my desire for passenger cars to pull behind my 2026.  So it's very possible that my interest in railroading, at least of the old-time variety, might be traced here.

Then in 1960, Santa brought me my first HO locomotive, an Athearn rubber-band-drive F-unit, painted (none too neatly) in New Haven livery.  It was fascinating, and I built a basic layout on our dining-room table wth cardboard Christmas houses and Plasticville street lamps.  I'm afraid I rather neglected the 2026 that year.

After the holidays were over, Mom decreed that she wanted her table back, and that was the end of the HO layout.  But as it turned out, it was the final phase of my early devotion to Lionel trains, as well.  As the years rolled on, I was less and less fascinated by the Lionel trains at Christmastime.  By 1968, the last Christmas I would spend at home, the 2026 stayed in the attic, and Dad put rolls of Life-Like grass mats down on the platform, for a loop of brass HO snap-track.

I was married in 1969, and moved far away from Pennsylvania.  Many, many other things occupied my mind for several years after that, but eventually the old love of trains began to creep back in.  I dabbled in HO and HOe (or HOn2 1/2, as it was more widely called then), and even N scale.  But since we were living in a succession of apartments at the time, there was never room for a layout.

In the mid-Seventies, I discovered a local hobby shop (now gone) that carried postwar Lionel, and I was hooked again.  I took a #50 Gang Car home with me.  It needed work, and I was not only reacquainting myself with 3-rail trains, I was discovering the pleasures of working on them, too.  I retrieved the 2026 from my parents' attic, and began slowly accumulating Lionel equipment, In one apartment there was room for a small Super-O layout, but that was the last one.  The trains became display pieces.

We finally moved back to Pennsylvania.  Eventually, I went back to school as a Computer Science major, which led to a job with A Major Eastern University (tm). I moved up in the IT field until by the time I retired in 2010, I was teaching.  During that time, we moved into our first house, where I had a short-lived fling with LGB 1:22.5, and had a basement layout for the first time.

When we moved into our current house in 1995, there was no longer as much basement space available, so the LGB equipment went into mothballs.  But I now had  enough postwar equipment to make me want a place to run it, and the tight curves of 3-rail track made a postwar layout possible.  I put up a loop in our new basement, expecting it to only last for the holidays.  

Finally I discovered 3-rail scale and FasTrack, and my current layout was born.  It's on the basement floor, nowhere near as large as I'd like, and I still don't have space for a "proper" benchwork layout, but I'm running trains -- and working on them -- more than ever.  In fact, I am currently restoring an American Flyer 312 K5 as I type.

Creeping "development" is slowly attacking the semi-rural area where we live, so this may yet prove not to be our final home.  Maybe a "real" layout is in the future after all.

So which of the above experiences influenced my attraction to railroad modeling?  All of them?  Or any of them?  Or was I just born with it?  Decide for yourself.

Moonson posted:

AMCDave, OMG, you were a cool kid! Good lookin', and you had your own train, cowboy cap-gun, and (if I am seeing correctly) a Tonka truck, no less ! AND check out that personality! You must have been the best-liked kid in the neighborhood, especially if you shared your stuff .

FrankM

I was and am blessed for sure!!!!! Next year I got a Daniel Boone coonskin hat! 

Moonson posted:

Glad you asked. (I guess we all would be.)

...the interest/love affair started here, at my parents' Christmas layout...

...and reinforced when shopping, as a child, with parents in hometown with trains cutting across the main drag in McKeesport, PA...

...further underscored while working at a steel mill in our hometown with trains everywhere...

..and seeing many train-related and steel mill-related sights almost daily...

..long after college, and my Manhattan years, then, teaching in Europe, and teaching 8 - 12th grades in the USA , I found myself, as a newly-wed, having the time, means, space, and wifely (key to success and fun, for me) enthusiasm for our having a layout in the basement for us and guests to enjoy...FrankM

you are very talented Frank.....and blessed.

In 1971 I woke up Christmas morning and much to my surprise, especially since I had never asked for a model train, nor to my memory, had ever been interested in them, there in the middle of the living room floor, next to a cool hot wheel double direction loop track set, was a conventional Lionel Yardmaster set.  I only know this now because I am more familiar with model trains.

It was a toy.  I played with it.  Used my play farm sets and animals to set up scenery and used cardboard boxes designed by my dad to act as tunnels.  We moved and in the process of moving the train wound up in a closet in the basement of the new house along with the rusty *** extra track my dad acquired from a co-worker.  There, it sat dormant for years.  I built my house and when I moved in, mom said get all that stuff in my basement and take it to your house, you have storage now, use it.  So the train, but not the track moved to my house.  There it sat dormant in my basement from 1993 until 2018.

I got married in 2002.  I married into a step-daughter.  Said daughter, we dropped the step part almost immediately, got married in 2007.  In 2015 she presented my with the love of my life, wife knows this, my now 3 year old grandson.  He lives next door to a 90 something year old man who fought in Italy and has a purple heart to thank for it.  Ed, as I will call him, loves model trains.  When my grandson was still a baby, he offered up one of his trains to him when "he was old enough to appreciate it."  When I heard this, my grand parental instincts kicked in and I said what any grandfather would say, "now wait just a minute, he's my grandson I'll be the one handing down trains."  Adult much.

Train was in good shape, track was in a landfill.  The flooded basement of 1994.  Needed track.  No train stores anywhere close to my house, but, this is 2017, we have the internet.  Typed model trains in the search box google, hit enter, tons of blue sentences referring to model train stores, ebay, fix it shops, you name it.  Emailed one of them.  Told them about my train, told them I needed some track, had no clue what I was doing.  Got a reply.  You have an O gauge train.  You need 027 tubular track.  You need this many pieces to complete a circle.  Bought said track.

Curiosity got the best of me.  Big Mountain Dew fan.  All things Mountain Dew.  Wondered if there was a train car with Mountain Dew on it.  Google again.  Up pops a K-Line box car with Mountain Dew on it.  Had to have it.  Bought it.  Then the gentle breeze we know as an hour or so of general searching led to the F5 tornado we know today as my obsession with trains.  I saw all kinds of what I know now are billboard rolling stock.  Cheerios, Rice Krispies, Butterfinger, Snickers, the list goes on and on.  Beer, Whiskey, Cigarettes, Oil companies, I don't know why but all of that just fascinated me.  I couldn't stop myself.  I bought car after car after car, box, reefer, tanker, hopper, flat cars with trailers on them.  I used to have money, now I am paying my mom back the money she loaned me to build my train room.  Don't worry I haven't missed a payment yet.

My wife was happy that I finally had a hobby.  Next came the locomotives.  I now own one locomotive representing each of the 5 U.S. class 1 railroads, an RJ Corman SD40-2 on preorder, anyone know when they will finally ship to stores, and one Southern railroad steam engine 4501 I use as a display. 

OGR was a natural step in the process.  I had to be able to talk about my hobby with people who understood what I was saying.  No one in my family cares diddly squat about railroads or model trains.  They listen, but it's that same, look at your watch and wonder when John will be finished with his boring story.  I usually get on OGR to ask questions and learn from people who have been there, done that, messed up, got it right, and are officially, "experienced".  I decided it was time to browse the threads and see if I might be of help to someone else and I saw this.

On Christmas 1946 (age almost 5) I found a Lionel 224 engine with a freight set under the tree. Although I liked it, I loved real steam engines even more, and from age 7, spent untold hours watching them zip by the Hollis, Long Island train station, near my grandparent's house. Toy-wise, I preferred my best friend's AF passenger set, and I've still prefer passenger cars. Then steam was gone by the mid-'50s, along with my interest in trains. It was now time for loud cars and quiet girls.

Fast forward to the late 1970s when I decided to get trains for under the tree for me and our 4 kids. The first two years they were HO, the next 5 years AF S, and in 1986, an O layout that I still put up today. In 2004, my grandson Luke was born, and he was train nut by 8 months old (the other grand kids showed no interest, and neither did my kids). So I built a 5x8 "year 'round" layout for both of us. He stayed my train buddy until about age 8, but he still likes going to Strasburg. Today I put up 2 Christmas layouts, plus I have small O and S layouts up all year.

I feel fortunate to have had a few years watching steam in action. There is a difference between seeing it at a "tourist RR" vs seeing it roaring by, pulling a passenger express at 80 mph.

AMCDave posted:

Moonson posted:

AMCDave, OMG, you were a cool kid! Good lookin', and you had your own train, cowboy cap-gun, and (if I am seeing correctly) a Tonka truck, no less ! AND check out that personality! You must have been the best-liked kid in the neighborhood, especially if you shared your stuff .

FrankM

I was and am blessed for sure!!!!! Next year I gota Daniel Boone coonskin hat! 

Ohmygosh, that is too much! Every one of us kids, back in the 50's,  wanted one of those, too! And you got one. See? You were a really cool kid, and apparently your folks felt that way about you too!

FrankM

I have told this story...my dad fired Southern RR Consols and Mikes during WWll (a greatly enlarged photo of his last loco, Mike #4526, graces my mantle, but l don't know how to post it. My grandfather farmed and was a jack of all trades after retiring from building cabooses for the L&N.  I lived on a depot lane and hung out at the Southern station.  My older cousin across the road had a latch coupler Lionel set that l was allowed to run, and DID! I was hooked, and asked for an "electric train" for Christmas. I received a Marx #25000 3/16 set, and was off! I got into HO in my teens, but just collected a closet full of Colorado roadname kits, and never got far with the layout in our huge basement, for at driving age, l became a car nut.  That continues, but a Flyer collecting supervisor a couple of decades later told me about 3/16 Marx l had never seen or heard of.  I was off again. In my HO period l acquired some rudimentary scratch building skills, so today l build and bash a lot of structures, and rolling stock nobody makes, and still haven't finished a layout.

1960, I received a used (unbeknownst to me) AF Santa Fe set for Christmas. My grandfather had passed away on 12/15.

1967 The locomotive "broke". Repairing broken toys was never a priority in our home. It was wrapped in newspaper and left in a box in my parents basement. 

1967-2004 Growing up, school, music, cars, boats, drag racing, girls, hunting, golf, jobs, children. Anything and everything you can imagine got in the way. I didn't even think of model trains.

2004 Lionel introduced the Polar Express set. We had seen the movie, and I thought it would be "fun". The first whiff of ozone, and I was a kid again.

2006 My Dad passed away. Something gave me the idea to collect examples of each N&W Steamer. With just a few exceptions, (based upon availability) I have achieved my original goal.

2007 Adrian Cates repaired my original AF locomotive. BTW, it was a broken wire.

2010 I finished the attic in our new home. Construction of my 14x39 layout began. I misfired with my original plans for a FasTrack layout. After a reset, it was built with GarGraves stainless steel track and Ross switches. I made the decision to make this a command control only layout. Good, bad, or otherwise I can run anything but conventional.

2010 River City 3 Railers formed. I am one of the four founding members. We currently have 6x11, 12x15, and 20'x46' layouts on two trailers.  Conventional locomotives are relegated to club layouts.

2013 My first granddaughter was born. It didn't take long to figure out that girls like trains too.

2016 My second granddaughter was born. She has "the knack". It upsets her big sister that she is more knowledgeable about running DCS. Both have TMCC and Lionchief down-pat.

2018 I retired. A high priority was to finish wiring my layout and get it operational. It's running now. There's still lots of work to do.

And so, the saga continues...…………...

Moonson posted:

 

..and seeing many train-related and steel mill-related sights almost daily...

 

Moonson, that is a spectacular and intriguing picture.  What can you tell us about where and when it was taken?  And about exactly what's going on in it?

--John

Balshis posted:

Moonson posted:

..and seeing many train-related and steel mill-related sights almost daily...

Moonson, that is a spectacular and intriguing picture. ...exactly what's going on in it?

--John

Hi Balshis, Those are steel mill slag cars dumping . The hot liquid contents eventually can become a granular semi-solid hillside. Slag is a waste product of the steel making process. A deposit, like that, in West Mifflin, PA, was accumulated near my childhood home, and it eventually became quite an extensive promontory, above a lowland, and a hillside, upon which we used to play and dig caves into (long after the hot slag had been deposited before we ever got there) . Some homes were built upon part of it, along Clonmel Street, and eventually a modest shopping mall was built atop larger flat areas of the slag deposit. Here is a photo, "Dumping slag West Mifflin," from a group of related photos saved by Gil Sterner, which is of the one in West Mifflin where we used to play...

...and here is the same area, presently, viewed from above, which has become overgrown with foliage, and you can see part of the neighborhood of which part was built near that valley that runs along the slag hillside of the above photo...

FrankM

P.S. Please pardon me if this reply to Balshis amounts to thread drift, albeit temporary.

In the beginning there was steam, and it was very good.

I recall vague backseat scenes of yards and main lines in and around the Toronto area during th the last gasp of Canadian steam. Dad's jalopy du jour in the less than picturesque parts of the city was the norm...Plumbers had loads of work in the late '50's and on occasion I went along sightseeing.  Better this than making an escape from parental eyes,I guess.  A cop pulled me from off the CNR bridge over highway 7 on one of those occasions, as mom recalls, at a mere 3yrs old.  That main was located at the end of our street and the tiny hamlet station of Concord ( formerly Thornhill stn. ) lay at the opposite end of that poured concrete and girder construction from 1923.  Coated in many layers, Tuscan was the CNR MOW shade on its board and batten sides with white trim covering arched doors and windows.  Differing from other OH&S depots along the line, a major passenger canopy formed by a ski jump roof over hung the facade.  A large steel pole held the dual armed order board that shot through a shallow central peek in the canopy.  There was a bump out window where once a station master made the wires sing by key.  A siding served a grain shed, built before such things as elevators, that collasped from too many brutal winters.  Up the line a few hundred yards was the tank, then feeding the greenhouses located along railroad property.

  Even a healthy area heritage culture somehow missed the old dame from the dawn of Upper Canada railroading.  One day, while deep in the scramble that was high school life, the wreckers attacked with no warning and my favorite train watching hangout was totally gone.  Even a chunk of rotted siding salvaged from its carcass might have made a treasured momento but CN made sure the sight was completely picked and the platform leveled.  After that I rarely crossed the bridge, which by then was new with the widening of #7.  My 115 yo. friend was gone all to soon.

Everything else springs from those beginnings.  Two steam excursions and loads of armchair wishing before life allowed me to afford the O scale hobby more fully....textbook stuff.

Bruce

I know I had a Lionel set as a kid, but it never amounted to anything. Didn’t get it until I was 9, and I never knew anyone with a layout. 

 About 23 years ago, realizing I was making a mess of my marriage and my life, I made some major changes. With my new found spare time, I went looking for a hobby. I messed with car models, but I am horrible at painting, so I really got into diecast cars. For some reason, I started thinking a train around my tree would be cool, don’t know why since I never saw one before. Anyway, Matchbox sends me a catalog, and it had a train in it. An HO set by Mantua, with Matchbox logos and a couple of cars. It showed up the day after Christmas, so I just ran it on the floor until New Years Day, then put it away. The next year, after seeing it on QVC, I bought a bunch of Bachmann EZ track, and things were much more fun. 

 I built two layouts in my basement, and had a blast building model houses and such.

 Seems I had managed to save my marriage, so about 18 years ago we had our first son. My Dad had been giving each grandson a Lionel set for his first Christmas. He was gone, but my Mom continued the tradition. I knew all of my nephews’ trains had disappeared into closets and yard sales, and I didn’t want to see it happen again. I created a Christmas tree layout, so Jarrett’s train would be used every year. Then Logan was born. When he got his Lionel set, I did not have enough space for another layout, so I removed some of my HO track, and ran the Lionel alongside my trains. 

After moving into a new house, I eventually gave up on running two different size trains, so I packed up the HO, and I switched over to O myself. My boys are teens now, and have little interest in trains, but I am all in. The Christmas train I built for Jarrett has been out for 17 seasons, though a new puppy may threaten it this year.

My hope is that when the boys are grown, they will at least take their trains with them, and run them for the holidays. They may not show much interest, but I know they would be bothered if we didn’t have the train around our tree every year.

I grew up in the house my late Dad grew up in that his  parents built in the late 40's.

One day in the fall when I was 6 years old ,I stumbled across my Dad's childhood trains in the attic.

He first was a little upset that I got into the attic,but then it must have hit that childhood spark because next thing I can remember he set up a loop of track in the floor in my loft bedroom and for hours we sat and watched that Marx/Lionel mix of trains run round and round.

So that Christmas I got my first Lionel train set which I still have today,along with most of the trains my Dad and I collected over the 30+ years we got to enjoy this great hobby together. 

So for around 43 years I've been enjoying this hobby year after year.

My childhood layout board (4x16) is here at my house,not in use,but plans are in the future to be incorporated into a permanent layout .

Sadly my two sons , 22 and 25 have no intrest in the hobby, but maybe one day they'll wake up 😉

I got my first layout 4ft x 8 ft for Xmas 1945 from my dad just back from Italy,what a surprise for a four year old.I have had trains ever since,through school and marriage,built my last layout in a separate building that I built in 1999 and had trains running by Xmas that year.Four houses and four layouts and this is the last one.

Mikey

Good post, Tom.

Got trains for gifts as kid. First, set them up with dad and ran them around Christmas tree at Christmas time only. Then, Dad built me a beautiful O27 layout with trestle on 4 by 8 plywood board on saw horses when I was 10.

Stopped doing trains when I was a teenager, girls and baseball became my priority, then just girls.

Got married and had 2 kids, perfect excuse for starting up with trains again, first around Christmas tree, then on ping pong table (hard choice to make because I also love ping pong). 

Then, built bigger basement layout that dominated playroom.

Then, converted from 027 to O and built current along the walls layout with my kids in playroom and laundry room. Highlights include my daughter announcing to my wife: "daddy did it, he tunneled through the wall between the playroom and laundry room and devalued the house (LOL); painting the backdrop with my kids and sister; building and painting the Popsicle bleachers with kids for Yankee Stadium; going to York Train Show in mid-1990s with family, buying my nice metal baseball figures for $150 at Choo Choo Barn, and going on Steam Train ride with family through Amish country and seeing the gorgeous Amish girls smiling at me. Arnold

Born in 1953.

1st train set, Marx Monon 55 or 56. 

1958. 1st Lionel set.  New Haven F3 freight set.

This video shows layouts through 1963.....set layout up till 65 or 66.  Lionels start around the 2:50 mark.

Then music and school took over. I played organ in a rock band from 68-71. Luckily, I realized that though I had the enthusiasm, I lacked an essential ingredient, TALENT.  Here's a recording.....our name was ALbatross.....my wife calls us : Peter & the Tone Deafs.

I turned to my strength in 71.....that is being a complete dork and and concentrated on school....Manhattan College 71-75 and SUNY Buffalo  Med School 75-79. Floor layouts in my room over Christmas 72 and 73. No room for trains living in cramped quarters.

Fast forward to Baltimore in 1980 (I had started my internal medicine residency at University of Maryland Hospital in 79). Saw and ad for a Greenberg Show at Towson State. Had nothing better to do, so went over......and got hooked again... The rest is history.

Floor layout in Baltimore through 83. Joined TCA.

Room layout in Phily  (doing my Nephrology Fellowship).  I was active in the Atlantic Division portable layout at the time. Married there (to a lady I had met at Maryland who was doing her Peds residency at CHOP).

Moved to Richmond VA and now I'm in my 3rd house and 3rd layout. 

Here are pics of the 2nd layout

In 2010.....became a Founding Member of the River City 3 Railers......and the rest is history.

In Gilly@N&Ws post, he talks about our local hobby shop, which has since closed due to retirement of the owner....we got together as a modular group because we use to "hang out" there......almost like that part in the Joe McDoakes short.....where he says..."and a round of track for the boys".

What a ride!

Peter

Putnam Division posted:

Born in 1953.

1st train set, Marx Monon 55 or 56. 

1958. 1st Lionel set.  New Haven F3 freight set.

This video shows layouts through 1963.....set layout up till 65 or 66.  Lionels start around the 2:50 mark.

Then music and school took over. I played organ in a rock band from 68-71. Luckily, I realized that though I had the enthusiasm, I lacked an essential ingredient, TALENT.  Here's a recording.....our name was ALbatross.....my wife calls us : Peter & the Tone Deafs.

I turned to my strength in 71.....that is being a complete dork and and concentrated on school....Manhattan College 71-75 and SUNY Buffalo  Med School 75-79. Floor layouts in my room over Christmas 72 and 73. No room for trains living in cramped quarters.

Fast forward to Baltimore in 1980 (I had started my internal medicine residency at University of Maryland Hospital in 79). Saw and ad for a Greenberg Show at Towson State. Had nothing better to do, so went over......and got hooked again... The rest is history.

Floor layout in Baltimore through 83. Joined TCA.

Room layout in Phily  (doing my Nephrology Fellowship).  I was active in the Atlantic Division portable layout at the time. Married there (to a lady I had met at Maryland who was doing her Peds residency at CHOP).

Moved to Richmond VA and now I'm in my 3rd house and 3rd layout. 

Here are pics of the 2nd layout

In 2010.....became a Founding Member of the River City 3 Railers......and the rest is history.

In Gilly@N&Ws post, he talks about our local hobby shop, which has since closed due to retirement of the owner....we got together as a modular group because we use to "hang out" there......almost like that part in the Joe McDoakes short.....where he says..."and a round of track for the boys".

What a ride!

Peter

 

What a great post and story of trains in your life, Peter. Thanks for sharing.

Peter, are you working on your current layout as hard as you did on the one you put together on Christmas Day when you were 3 years old? LOL

It's amazing to see all the parallels in these stories. Also to remember how a simple oval of track with a train going round and round could entertain us for hours. As I'm reading these stories more and more memories come back.

Great stuff

I too, was born in 1953.  I've been in and out three times.  My father built the first layout in the mid-50's.  He bought everything from Amato's in New Britain, CT.  Since then, two more houses, and five more layouts.  No trains from age 13 to age 33, because of baseball, college, marriage, two kids, work, etc. 

We found two huge boxes from the old layouts in a storeroom underneath the family TV store.  Most of the engines and switches had been stolen.  Made me mad enough to start a new attic layout, at our new home, with my father's help.   Here are two, rather poor, pics from a huge layout that had 9 full 4 X 8 boards.  I replaced most of what was lost, including this SF F-3 and the UP 2023 Alco.

We moved into my parents house when they passed, mostly because my dad had built a great rec-room, in a large basement.  I put up a small layout in a corner room of the basement.  Our kid's athletics and school soon required that that layout be taken down for a weight room and office.  I saved several pieces, and a large one from the attic layout.  Another 15 years went by with lots of stored trains, but no layout.

This is what got me back into trains about 10 years ago:  A brand new, pristine, SF 2343 that Lionel had the good sense to reproduce.  When I saw it online, I just had to have it.  Those warbonnet F-3's were always my favorite as a kid, when we had three on the first two layouts.  Naturally, I had to begin to build layout #5

These are my first two pics of the current table layout.  

I removed all but one of the top cabinets and started on top of the lower cabinets.

This is the only section saved from the old attic layout.  It had been propped up against that wall for 15 years.

The lower section from layout #4, had been in the attic for the same 15 years.

It's safe to say that I'm now back into trains for good.  These are from the three rooms of the table layout.

Since us train guys are rarely satisfied, I built layout #6 nearly four years ago, when I retired from teaching.

It's hard to beat model trains for coolness.  Thanks for reminding me of how much they have meant through all the years.

Jerry 

I got the old "1954" set out for my father and put it under the Christmas tree one year. The kids loved it. The neighbhood kids loved it. Somehow a ready to run set appeared with fastrack. That was like a lightning bolt.  Well that's been replaced now but the older set lives on just on much better track.