First Layouts

[Anonymous]

I'd love to hear about your first layouts. Mine true to tradition was a piece of plywood with a loop of Lionel track.

[Munster518]

Well, my first layout wasn't 3 rail, it was N scale. My first O gauge layout consisted of my first train set which I think was an MPC yard boss. It was a basic oval with a few switches an such. I know I didn't have a lot of accesories, if at any, maybe just a crossing gate with some match box. Which some how, the matchbox made there way onto the tracks and the engineer could'nt stop in time[:D] Gotta love those memories.

John[:)]

[danguarddog]

My first layout was HO in the early 70s. I then switched to N scale. In 1976 I tore it down and sold it to a brother of a friend of mine. I was a senior in high school and too old to play with trains. LMAO In the winter of 1989 I decided to buy my son a train for under the tree, which was a lionel. The train bug returned and since then I have purchased lots and lots of Lionel trains, with a few K Line and MTH items also.

Dan

[tcripe]

Mine was an 027 figure 8 on a 3' x 6' piece of plywood, built by my dad in the early '50s. It had a Marx crossing gate, semaphore, and gantry crane, and the Lionel oil derrick. Train was a 1110 Scout set, all powered by a 45 watt transformer!
- Terry

[Jumijo]

I'm building my first O layout now. It's an L shaped layout with 2 main lines and a few sidings. A 4x6 sheet connects to a 4x8 sheet to form the L. 2" foam on top of plywood. Scenery is plaster cloth over the foam. Home-made trees, some scratchbuilt structures and bridges.

Jim

[marxalot]

After being banned from running the Marx 1666 train on the dinning room floor my father stopped by one Saturday and built a couple of saw horses and put 2 4'x8' sheets of drywall on them for an 8' by 8' table. Hey, it sagged a little but man was it great. I put one large oval around the perimeter and one turnout for a station siding. I put a bunch of Plasticville structures down, poked holes through the drywall and used our Christmas tree lights to illuminate the buildings. I also took the time to install black thread on a bunch of power poles. This worked great until a friend came over, spun around on the vertical drain pipe in the basement , like he always did, and pulled on the one thread that I had terminated on the pipe to keep everything taunt. All the poles just headed west and ended up leaning. I still laugh about seeing that occur!

Good memories..........

Jim

[lionelsoni]

When we moved from Japan to Indiana in 1953, my father used the copious amounts of rough lumber from the crates that the Japanese movers built for our furniture to build me a table in the basement (as well as a rowboat and a very uneven ping-pong table).

[Anonymous]

Have you ever seen the old 1951 movie "The Day the Earth Stood Still"? The little boy in that flick had a 3 rail loop with a spur mounted on a sheet of plywood which was mounted on casters so the layout could be rolled under a bed when not in use. Mine was like that, minus the spur.

[Anonymous]

Christmas 1964 I recieved a second hand American Flyer set already mounted to a 4' X 8' table. Just an oval with 2 switches formed a passing siding. The roster included 2 steamers ( can't remember their configuration ) and a green and yellow Northwestern diesel. A few plasticville buildings, a station and a rotating beacon where about the only accessories. I was that snooty kid down the block who knew real trains didn't have 3 rails! Sadly, the only remaining item in my posession from that first train is a little Plasticville telephone booth

Bruce Webster

[tmcc man]

My first layout was a small 3ft by 8ft table. Nevertheless, it drew me in further to the hobby.

[rlplionel]

Here are two photos of my first layout (the smaller 4x6 plywood board) with an add-on 4x8 plywood extension. The extension was added after my brother received his train set. The layout was set up before the holidays, and stayed up afterwards until someone wanted to play pool. [;)]



Robert
http://home.surewest.net/rlplionel/Robert.htm

[laz 57]

Like the CHIEF on the floor.
laz57

[pbjwilson]

!936 - on the living room rug



(not really, It's just one of my better pictures. But I can pretend!)

[Tom1947]

I started out on the floor. When we moved to Harrisburg my father bought a sheet of 5 X 9 plywood. It was to be a ping pong table for my sister and for my trains. She had not interest in ping pong so I took it over for my layout until I went to the Navy. When I came home from boot camp my mom sugested I put my trains away. I still have my orginal set along with additonal cars, engines accesores that I have accumulated over the years. They have survied my fathers sister who put them out ifor the garbage man to take which I retreived. This will be the first year in ten or twelve years that I will have them up for Christmas. I started on the bench work for Christmas today.

[jwse30]

My first layout was on top of a ping pong table that had to have been 15 x 25 feet. At least that's the way I remember it looking. I would guess it was really 4 x 8 or maybe 5 x 9. It was basicly a loop of track, or a figure 8, or a dogbone, et al. I had two switches, so most of the time I had two spur sidings. I had a crossing gate, and a banjo signal, and a few buildings.

Most important of all was that I had fun

J White

[Anonymous]

my first layout was put tograther by my uncle in 1936or 37
it was 8x8 ply wood
on a sheet/little cardboard buildings/with cotton for snow
072 lionel track
an M10,000 silver union pacific silver streamliner
and a gateman in his shanty

That started my love affair with trains
I still have that M 10000 its on my present lay out but runs no more

Someday i'll get tired of trains but not yet

Don

[FJ and G]

I used to just use the floor for layouts in 60s, 70s, just like the Chief does. HO, Lionel, Brio, Marx.

About 1999 I made an HO coffee table with 4 seasons and right after that I made a toy train layout using pallets. I'll try & find pictures to post.

[Anonymous]

Well, like almost all of the rest of us, I started out on the floor. Before I got into O gauge, I had HO. When I was 6, I had a Bachman HO circle set with a Santa Fe Warbonnet F9 (my first HO set, purchased that summer). For Christmas that year I received an identical set in CP Rail, some extra cars, track and an Atlas station kit. My dad also gave me a 3'x6' piece of plywood with astro-turf stapled onto it to set up the trains on. This became known as "the green board". However, it was temporary and would just be set on the livingroom floor whenever I set up my trains. I could fit two loops of track on it (an oval with a circle inside). A neat addition later on was a long strip of cardboard about 8 inches high that ran the length of the board and had four tunnel entrances cut into it. It sat at the back of the green board and the trains would disappear when they went in. I decorated it by drawing trees on it. This was inspired by the HO layout at the Western Development Museum at Saskatoon, where the trains would disappear into tunnels behind the wall in a simmilar fashion.

By the time I was in grade two, I had accumulated many more HO trains and it became clear that I needed a permanent layout. My dad built me a large L-shaped layout in the basement. It used Life-Like grassmats and was capable of running three trains simultaneously. There was a bridge, a "yard" with three sidings and a siding for an elevator. That same layout (although heavily modified) forms part of my current HO layout.

I had always wanted a Lionel train and when I was 10, my wish came true (sort of). I received a Marx 4-wheel plastic set with a 490 steam engine, NYC tender, NYC gondola, NYC caboose, a 6-inch tin DL&W hopper car and a pile of O27 track, which included a crossover and a Sakai right-hand switch. A 4'x8' layout was hurredly constructed which I set it up on. For accessories, I used some homemade wooden buildings that had come with an HO layout my dad bought at an auction, which were grossly out of scale for HO, but were just the right size for O gauge.

I got more and more O gauge (and HO) trains and things continued to grow into what I have now. It's something to look back at how far I've come in these years.

[mackb4]

My very first layout was in 1974 at the ripe ole age of 5.It was on the exact layout board my Dad had as kid in the 50's.It was only to be for the first few laps until my Dad had a vision of something bigger.We built a 5x16 layout,with double reverse loop's,and two sidings.I still have my layout board(minus track)in my basement of my home.My Dad's became flooring in his attic.