Your Personal Layout History.....Have you archived it?

Great story Peter!! 

Thanks!

Alan

In Baltimore ( I am breaking this up into a few posts to accommodate the pics), in winter/spring of 1980, 4 things happened:

1. I brought my trains from the Bronx to my apartment in Baltimore.

2. I bought a copy of Ron Hollander's book on the Lionel Corporation history.

3. I went to a Greenberg Show at Towson State College.

4. I discovered Antique Train & Toy World on Falls Rd and MB Klein in downtown Baltimore.

I set up a layout on the floor of my apartment......

By 1983, I had met some TCA members who convinced me to join and go to York. My 1st time was April 83 (and have been blest that I have only missed twice since).

In the summer of 83, I moved to Philly to do a nephrology fellowship.....I had a 4x8 spare room layout.......sadly, I HAVE NO PICS! Boy, do I regret that!

In Philly, I was a member of the Atlantic Division. I was part of a group led by Phil Ritter that took a modular layout to nursing homes and hospitals for the patients to enjoy. Sadly again, NO PICS!

I married in Philadelphia.....My future wife was already there doing her Peds residency at CHOP.

In 85, we moved to Richmond VA where I joined a nephrology practice....and had our 1st child.

I set up a spare room layout.

In 87, we moved to a bigger house......from 87-89, I had a spare room railroad that housed a 8x8 layout......sadly again, NO PICS! I hope you younger guys are getting a hint.....document what you do over the years. It's hard to share memories without pics! Luckily, digital phones with cameras have likely solved the problem.

In 92, my wife (she's amazing!), refinanced the house and cashed out $10K to finish the attic... and, things really took off.

The layout grew and grew over time.....The girl above is my 2nd child and this was followed by my son.

Post 2000 pics:

Building progressed to 2003, when we decided to move another house.....Take down......

oh, what a mess!

Peter

New house......no layout until we redid the attic......but college tuitions got in the way.....so I improvised.....2004 till 2011. I improvised.....old kitchen table, carpet, bare floor, driveway/outdoors and garage.

I guess, where there's a will, there's a way.....

Peter

In 2009, I did get a reprieve.....I became a founding member of the River City 3 Railers Modeling Group.....I now had a layout to run trains!

In 2011, with my son off to college, I realized that redoing the attic was not in the financial cards, and a smaller layout in the basement was possible.....the modular group fulfilled my desire for a large layout to run long trains....and so, the current layout began......big enough for me to handle and I hope to finish it by the end of 17.

Thanks for letting me ramble......now, I'd love to see other layout histories...

By the way......if you are wondering where I got all the time to do this, my amazing wife of 30+ years who has supported my train addiction( and married me and has stayed married to me in spite of it) had the 1st of her 2 total knee replacements and I am keeping things quiet (no train running or construction noise) while she recuperates....

Peter

Peter this is great stuff and all of us lifers in the hobby came a different road, but its great to see how its evolved grown into great pleasure, I will tell my story in an upcoming OGR video.

Peter,

 Great pictures. Thanks for sharing. Not bad at all for a kid from Spellman! 

Tom

Great thread, Peter. It saddens me to think of all the projects I have built over the years...now long gone...that hadn't been photographed. Oh well.

I think this shot is great...

A tag borrowed from a Norcostco (Northwestern Costume Company) catalog..."It's More Fun in Costume"

Peter, you are an asset to the hobby.   Thank you for sharing your story with others.  I always enjoy talking trains to you.  I am proud to have your signature on my train room wall.

Marty Fitzhenry posted:

Peter, you are an asset to the hobby.   Thank you for sharing your story with others.  I always enjoy talking trains to you.  I am proud to have your signature on my train room wall.

 

Marty....I am honored to have signed your wall and to call you & Dotty friends!

Peter

Peter,

Great story and pics. Thanks for sharing.

Great read. lots of fun stuff

Brent

Great story, Peter!

Jim

Great story Peter!  You have trains in your blood for sure!  "Peter and the tone deafs"  that is a good one! 

Well done Peter. Growing up in Manhatten I can greatly appreciate setting up a layout in an apartment. I'm glad I saved my old photos as you have done. Amazing to look back and see how we started out.

I really enjoyed this story, thanks for posting it. Even though you had some gaps I think you did a good job of keeping track of things with pictures over the years. Much better than we have done. I hope your wife recovers quickly from her knee replacement surgery with no problems encountered along the way and I wish her well. And also the same wishes for her 2nd knee. After recovery, I'm sure having one more to go is not much fun to think about.

I hate to echo the other responses, but this was a truly wonderful read. Even though I don't have any photos from my trains over the years, yours brought back a lot of memories of the good times. I also enjoyed the photos of the Mianne benchwork and the fact that they made provisions for shelving. Between you and RTR12, I might just have to see what they can do for the layout I am about to begin.

Nice collection of Roiling Stock.

Good Luck, John 

Peter, this is great!  I loved reading your history in the hobby.  This is something I've been wanting to do for a long time.  I have video of my layout from the early 1980s and late 90s.  I need to check with my parents for pictures and video of my layouts from the 60s, then combine them with what I have and add my current layout.

I always had a layout of some kind, including a N scale set up in my first (3 room) apartment, but didn't document them.

I hope I can do it in my spare time.

P.S.: Tell your wife to stay positive!  Lynley had both knees replaced back in the summer (before we saw you in Gettysburg) and she was walking on the beach seven weeks out from surgery!

Hi Peter • Like the Classic Lionel Photos • Back in the Day

Rock - N - Roll

Nice anthology Peter, and quite a few photos from the past and present. My brother and I built a lot of layouts in the basement to be brought upstairs for Christmas. We took tons of photos, but sadly, they are long gone. My grandmother was a video nut, and my sister has all the old home movies, 8MM Bell and Howell camera,  so I'm sure there are several with shots of the "platform" with the post war Lionel trains in the background.

As much as I love trains, I have to admit that I was immediately drawn to the Kustom amp in your first post. I still have mine, but in a hybrid form at church. I dismantled the speaker cabinet, and built a custom cabinet with 16 speakers, two of which are from the original cabinet, powered by the original head. We run my guitar, and an electronic piano through it for weekend Mass, and other services, with room to spare for at least one other instrument.

Back to layouts, I have hundreds of photos of my trains, and the bridges my son Mark and I built, along with dozens of progress photos of the suspended layout attached to my work shop. I also have photos of all the loads I've made. Most importantly, are the photos of friends I've met over the years at York and other shows. I also have photos from the many visits to Weaver Models over the years, including a group picture of the folks and me taken during the final days of operation. 

Thanks for starting this topic, I enjoyed reading your story.

Don

Peter, what a well put together history.  Like so many of us about your age, you have experienced the boyhood dream starting in the fifties.  And what a great dream, or should I say, reality you had, still having and hopefully will have for many more years. 

Myself, I cannot understand why, being a sort of amateur photographer, I did not photograph my layouts.  I do have some photos of the last layout I had, but they are not the best quality, having been transferred from slides to the computer.  One frustrating story, however.  I had a great layout showcasing almost all of Lionel and Some American Flyer operating accessories.  I borrowed a cam-corder and filmed it in it's complete operational cycle one day.  This was about 1990.  Those cam-corders then, had a miniature VHS tape that held the recorded subject matter.  You placed it into a specially equipped VHS tape cartridge and slipped it into your VCR to what.  All went very well.  I lent the tape to friends who enjoyed it very much.  Then one day I came home to find that my daughter had used the same tape to record her dance practice. 

Putnam Division posted:

I've been a train nut for as long as I can remember. I grew up in the Bronx. My earliest memories are with my maternal grandfather carrying me on his shoulder to watch the number 6 EL train at the Middletown Rd station. My paternal grandparents lived next to the 4 track New Haven main line in Larchmont. McGinnis-Liveried engine and silver washboards are stuck in my memory......

I got a Marx Monon set in 56 at the age of 3. That set was forever put away when I got my Lionel F3 freight set in 58.

Yesterday, I decided to group my layouts in a historical file. It was a lot of fun and brought back loads of memories.....Has anyone else done this? I would recommend doing it if you have not. I would loved to see the "layout history" of others. Since I will be 63 in June and a TCA member since 83, I am one of those old dying model railroaders described by the WSJ article ( and as I said, the early report of my death is greatly exaggerated! ).

I don't have early pics.....I do have 8mm movies shot by my dad....

1:05...you see me playing with my Marx set.

2:05...you see my opening my Lionel set at Christmas 1958.

2:50....till the end....videos of the layout in 59 and 63.

The 4x8 board went up in my room every year until probably 68 (I went to Cardinal Spellman HS in the Bronx 67-71...and this is where I was 1st exposed to the former New York, Boston & Westchester RR because I traveled on the Dyre Ave subway, the number 5).

After HS, from 71-75, I went going to Manhattan College for undergrad studies and set up a small layout on the floor of my bedroom.

...as you can see, I also was interested in music at the time.....I played organ in a rock band...I have old reel-to-reel tapes of my band.....My wife refers to them as a recording of "Peter & the Tone Deafs"......

Realizing that though I was enthusiastic about music, I lacked that necessary ingredient (talent), I moved on to med school at UB in Buffalo in 75. In my apartment in Buffalo I had no room for a layout......but did set up a cheap Tyco HO set around my Christmas tree every year. By visiting local hobby shops in Western NY, I realized Lionel had resurrected as MPC. 

After 400"+ of snow in 4 years, I looked south and moved to Baltimore in 79 to begin my Internal Medicine residency....and that's were it all began again.

Peter.

Hi Peter,

Nice pics. Noticed the Kustom and Fender amps. I play bass myself.

https://picasaweb.google.com/m.../6113096613753167217

My father spent a lot of time archiving the beginning.

Mat

Very cool thread idea, Peter!  (And to find out you are a fellow (though about 15 years before me) UB student was a neat bonus!  I was there 90-96)  I built a few small HO structures while at UB, but never had any room for a layout of any sort.  I lived in either a suite in Clement (double with roomate) or Goodyear (single, but shared bathroom with 2 other guys), so space was sort of at a premium.

I don't think I have any pics of my childhood layouts (either HO 4x8 permanent or small temporary "carpet central" Lionel), but I did start doing some VHS-C recording when I first started with O gauge in my apartment in 97.  I didn't have a digital camera until 2001, from then on I probably took some good pics over the years as the apartment layout evolved.  I think I took some dis-assembly pics when I moved out to buy my house. 

The house Layout hasn't taken off due to a combination of me hesitating on how much I want to do (finish basement or no, etc) as well as some work chaos over the recent years, but I do have the basic loops on the table I had in my apartment set up at least.  (I built them modular, so I moved them and was able to re-assemble the few I had to partially take apart to either get them out of the apartment or into the basement of the house.)

This thread may motivate me to actually take some action and build a few tables out of the lumber I bought almost 7 years ago in prep for enhancing the layout!

-Dave

Nice story Peter.  I am honored to have shared some of that time with you in the Bronx.  It was nice to hear your whole story. Thanks for sharing it with us. I hope your wife's recuperation goes well. 

Peter - Thanks so much for taking the time to tell your story and organizing  the photos into a wonderful chronological series.  Your story of commitment and, most of all, your passion for this great hobby is most touching.... and the photos help bring your story to life.  Thanks so much for sharing! What a treasure and pleasure to read and see!!!!

Wonderful story! Thanks for sharing!

Thanks everyone for your kind words. This was a lot of fun to do.....

I hope this stimulates the older Forum members to get their layout histories together.......and for the younger members, to document what you do.....I sadly have 2 lost layouts, each one was up for between 1-2 years before being dismantled. It's hard to share a memory without pics!

....and thank you all for the kind wishes for my wife's recovery......

Peter

Pat Kn posted:

Nice story Peter.  I am honored to have shared some of that time with you in the Bronx.  It was nice to hear your whole story. Thanks for sharing it with us. I hope your wife's recuperation goes well. 

Pat....it was a real treat when we realized that we grew up 3 blocks from each other; went to the same elementary school (St.Theresa's in the northeast Bronx), played at each other's layout as kids and were in scouts together.....

What a blast is was to re-discover a childhood friend! We hadn't spoken or had seen each other since the late 60s! This Forum is great! 

Peter

Great story Peter. I bet those 400" of snow in four years was skewed by the Blizzard of 77!

Jim Z, I was there........50" on the ground and maybe 30" in 7 hours......wind chills in the minus 30s....I may be a little off in my numbers , but you get the picture!

Never experienced anything like it since!

Peter

Putnam Division posted: 

 

What a blast is was to re-discover a childhood friend! We hadn't spoken or had seen each other since the late 60s! This Forum is great! 

 

It's certainly a small world Peter.  

 

Fantastic story and pictures.  Have you considered writing a book about your life with trains?  I'd pick up a copy.  

I do not believe there are any photographs of my earliest layouts anywhere.  For some reason the picture is still very clear in my head of sitting on top of my father's 8'x8' layout in the basement while her ran the 2055 about.  All in all a very simple loop around the table with 2 reversing loops and 1 or 2 passing sidings.  it was more complex than it appeared, however as each switch and block of power could be controlled from a Commodore 64 computer, so that the train could be programed to follow various complex routes.  That layout made it up until I was 7 years old.  At 7 it was decided I needed my own bedroom, and my dad moved out of the bedroom that was his office/workshop and moved all his stuff into the part of the basement where the trains had been.  

The Lionel stayed boxed up for several years at that point. The train bug bit both of us by the time I was 9, with a simple HO starter set, and the HO kept me going for a few years.  Soon enough I had a 4'x8' table shoehorned into my 8'x10' bedroom, the thing hanging out half way over my bed.  This was another simple affair, 2 loops and a small yard, but it was perfect at the time.  I'd sit on the bed doing homework and let the trains run, or more often forget about the homework as I got into building the HO model buildings.  At some point the trains drifted from my attention, and the HO layout became a giant table for me to stack books and other toys.  I'd guess I was about 12 when we decided to remove the room filling table and get a desk in there to do my school work and what-not.  

Around that same time, however the bug hit my father and he pulled the lionel trains up from the basement.  It started with a simple loop around the coffee table on the living room floor...but soon enough it became a tradition every weekend to assemble ever larger carpet central layouts.  At one point the tracks ran through the living room, down the hall off into my bedroom, then back up the hall and into the kitchen before returning to the living room. This process of setting up on friday night, and taking it all down sunday persisted for a few months before we decided it was time to build a new semi-permenate layout.  Space was tight, so we ended up with a 4'x8' layout made of two 4x4 sections and designed with plugs and such so that it could be disassembled and moved out of the way if the space was needed. as it turned out, it remained set up in the living room for several years.  This layout was crammed full, having two loops, reverse tracks in both directions, and a yard with 3 tracks.  This layout survived up until  my father's health declined and he was no longer able to get up and down the stairs to the workshop there.  The trains were disassembled and workbenches installed in the living room.  

We went without trains for several years, and to be honest, I had other things on my mind throughout high school.  I don't recall when the bug hit again, but it must have been just after I graduated high school... Got it into my head I wanted to build a new O gauge layout, and one that wasn't so cramped as the last.  By this time we's had a full second story addition built on the house, and some family friends that had been staying upstairs had just moved out.  Joy of joys I had a 12x12 room all to my self.  The benchwork was not thought out particularly well, but it did the job.  a simple 2x4 frame with 1/2 inch OSB over the top to form a 12x8 table top.  In my first experiment with curves wider than O27 I had the amazingly wide O42 curves on 2 of the three main loops around the layout.  To date this was my largest and most operational layout.  This layout lasted for several years, but as I got into working on cars and spending much more time with friends and girls, I did not get a lot of run time... another down side was that the layout was directly above my parents bed room, so I had to work run time around when the noise would not be a bother.  The layout finally had to go when my girlfriend moved in and the 8x10 bedroom just would not cut it.  everything got boxed up neatly and packed away once again.  

Since then I've not had any permeant layout.  it's been back to the carpet central, and for a while several very large loops on the basement floor.   At the moment I'm unable to do anything more than a single oval of fast track on the floor, but it is enough to keep me happy.  I have the massive full basement layout designed with all the o72 curves and multi levels, but at the moment it is on hold until I can get life straightened out.  

Wow, that's a big block of text... 

Anyway, that's my layout history up to this point.

JGL

I had a O-27 set, which only could be set up on the living room or dining room floors. That means it was never running for very long. Nobody ever took photos and I was just a little kid at the time.

I then had an HO loop on probably a 4X4' plywood base my dad made for me as an early teen. I don't think there are any photos of that today as I never got scenery done as it, too, had to be moved whenever anyone needed to do... anything.

I then built a HO switching layout that looked like a module for a larger group. I did as good as I could again, once dad did the benchwork for me. This was in my room but I didn't design it well so I couldn't switch more than one car at a time. I had fun building stuff but I knew nothing of switching like in an op session. I took lots of photos but have no clue where any are today. If there are photos of it exist, I'd be embarrassed for anyone to see them. It was gone by sometime in the 90s, if memory serves.

I left the hobby about that time due to the worst possible experience with a module club I could have imagined killed my interest.

Cut to 2014, when I finally built my very first layout where all the "heavy lifting" (other than electrical), I did by myself. That one is all documented on my website link...

JohnGaltLine wrote: 

Fantastic story and pictures.  Have you considered writing a book about your life with trains?  I'd pick up a copy.

John....you are too funny! I am, however, touched by your comments.

Peter

Kinda, sorta.

I've been very indecisive on what exactly I want. I can also be a very spur of the moment. Like instantly just decide to rip everything apart and start over. I can also be pretty impatient - if I decide I want something or decide to change something, I should've gotten it yesterday or finished it already).

Here is a short run through. I had a good sized O Gauge carpet railroad several years ago. Lots of fun. That gave way to my time in N, HO, and G. I've got some print photos around but would be difficult to pull them out.

Here are some photos of the various incarnations of my O Gauge layout since 2010.

Here is my first 4x8 with scenery. Before going with scenery, I was running a toy/tinplate type layout on green carpet on this table.

After vastly improving (really just blowing the dust off) my scenery skills, I expanded that original 4x8. Shortly after finishing the expansion, I tore the entire layout down as I was unhappy with some spots in the track work. I could have easily fixed it and wish I did. I sure do miss having this layout!

After I tore the old layout down, I tried a new 4x8 with Atlas track and scenery. Hated the Atlas, later replaced it all with tubular track and Ross switches. Soon after (~2 months), I tore that down and, wanting to keep it simple, went to a clean looking tinplate layout with focus on the trains. Here is the result:

That clean look started to look a bit too clean...trees, lichen, accessories, etc start to appear. I remove the entire yard and try no switches, just loops and more buildings. I also added the elevated loop and the elevated bump and go trolley.

Here is a slightly out of date (late Fall 2015) photo that shows roughly where I'm at now. The elevated trolley didn't last long. I felt it really obstructed the buildings, etc. The yard is back, although a bit smaller (4 car capacity). A tunnel was built. I also built a new elevated loop as I wanted to get rid of the original with 0-27 curves and go to 031 curves. I also replaced the 0-27 curves in the center with 031. I also got a (free!) NIB Lionel Village Trolley Set with Track/Transformer from the 1990s and got that going. Now I have two bump and go trolleys running, 3 trains and lots of accessories (lots of lights!). Since this photo was taken, I added the other "new/old" free trolley near the high rise department store building, moved a few buildings around, reorganized my yard to remove some S-curves and a switch while still keeping the 4 car capacity. I've also added a few smaller buildings and accessories. I thought I had a more up to date and current picture but I guess I was wrong. I will have to update my photo. I also ditched command control (YAY!!) and went back to 100% conventional.

With the thought of selling our long time home in the coming years looming, I've also been very happy with the current layout and have no intention of changing things. I'm sure I'll add a few minor things and reorganize a few areas but overall, what you see is what will stay for a while!