Pardon me while I brag on the kid. This post won't be very exciting or informative for most of you, but hey, this forum is about all aspects of the hobby, right?
A little while back I picked up a little used set from goodwill for an excellent price. Since we have our layout already done, I scrapped the bachmann ez-track that came with it. Yesterday AM before church, the boy and I were in the train room talking about the lay and I was quizzing him on how we wanted to do our programming track. I could rewire one of our sidings with a DBDT toggle and make that our programming track or I could use some of the ez-track and mount that to the fascia. When I pulled out the box it came in and showed him the track he said, "Dad where did you get this?" I told him it came with his Alaska locomotive. I went on to organize some other stuff in the train room leaving him to his own devices. 10 Mins later, he had built himself a boot shaped "layout" on the floor, had hooked up the DC power pack and was running some old tyco DC locos and a string of cars. I was most impressed because it came with both 18" and 22" radius turns and he was able to make the geometry work. I did have to fix a couple of misaligned junctions that were causing derailments, but all in all, not bad for a 6 y/o...
Great story! A future model railroader in the making! Thanks for sharing..!
Neal
Congratulations and I hope you can keep him interested.
Have fun,
Richard
Pretty sure the bug has bitten deep if he's still going at it at 6. I was also well along in my obsession by 6 and it has stuck for an additional 44 years so far. My boys though, they never really got past the Thomas phase. From 2-4 or so, they were really into Thomas and going on train rides, but past 5 they didn't care. At 26 and 22, neither has come back to the hobby. There's still a chance. Tony Koester always says it tends to skip a generation, so I may still have a chance if either one gives me grandchildren (no rush, please...).
I think this one's a keeper, showing skill in both figuring out how the track sections all work together AND figured out the wiring - something some adults have problems with. He's well hooked.
--Randy
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
Lonnie UtahPardon me while I brag on the kid.
You have every right to be proud!
Dave
I'm just a dude with a bad back having a lot of fun with model trains, and finally building a layout!
Good for you, and your son, Lonnie.
With my son, we started about the same time, but, I also hunted, and fished, and by 12, he was in a hunter safety course, and the rest is history.
At 34, he still likes to come over and see my latest model railroad project, as we talk hunting and fishing.
Mike.
My You Tube
Good story around that same topic. My dad passed when i was 9. or else I'd probably be a hunter today as well, along with a model railroader. He was a hunter and heavily active in hunter safety. Another member of the same rod and gun club we belonged to passed around the same time, and the local region of the fisha nd game commission started a yearly award in both their names to the person who contributed the most to hunter safety education in the region. But all this might never have been - in cleaning out the house after my Mom passed almost 2 years ago, we found an essay my Dad wrote in high school. And also a summons to a hearing with the game commission - as plaintiff. As it turns out, the VERY FIRST time he went hunting with HIS dad, my Grandfather, he got shot by a fellow hunter. A few pellets in his leg, from a rather long way away, so nothing serious, but in the essay he writes how he wanted to confront the guy who mad a stupid shot towards people, but his Dad kept him calm. He finishes up the essay by saying he wasn't sure if he would ever go hunting again. Well, he did. ANd winning a Flyer HO train set in a block shoot (or maybe it was a Moose Lodge door prize, not sure, this was all before I was born of course) re-ignited an interest in model railroading. As a kid, he had a Flyer O 3-rail Zephyr and a little later a Lionel Scout set - I have both. That Flyer train set grew into a layout that filled the second bedroom of the house he and my Mom lived in after they got married. Up until I came along, then the room was needed for me and away went the trains, except for a loop around the tree every year. I have an old 8mm home movie of me running the train when I was 2 1/2. When I was 3 we moved to the house I spent the rest of my childhood in, and there we had room, at least over the holidays, to set up trains again, so out it all came and over the years we added on and got more stuff and other than during college and maybe the first year after, have always been invovled in model railroading at some level, even if it was just armchair modeling for many years.
Great story Randy. We have my dad's Marx O-27 train from the 1950's. After the HO layout us finished, I'm going to put it up on a shelf in the kid's room.
He's had a O gauge polar express set since he was 3 or 4. It's not a permanent setup so he's acustomed to putting that one together and hooking it up. It wasn't that big of a leap from that to this. The rail joiners on ez track were a bit more complicated vs the Lionel fast track. But connecting the power pack was basically the same.
Great story! One of my kids is super into trains. The sneaky five-year old even takes cars off my bench and puts them on the floor to scoot around. Sometimes before bed, he wants to watch Youtube videos of long consists and call out the types of cars.
I know the phase won't last forever but all about living in the moment. Of course he doesn't play with the DCC throttle but neither do his siblings (yet!).
kasskabooseThe sneaky five-year old even takes cars off my bench and puts them on the floor to scoot around.
Yeah, my guys does that too. We've had to talk about it because the fur from the pup gets in them and causes them not to roll so well on the track. He knows there are ones he can "play" with and ones he can't. Which brings me to another point. Our layout truly gets "played" with. He drives the cars and trucks on the layout drive around from place to play. He absolutely pitched a fit at one of the train shows for a container truck that was WAY too long (and a bit on the pricey side as well) for the tight, twisty roads on out layout. He moves the people around in the city and countryside and moves the animals around on the farm. Our layout is never the same twice and I find it interesting the stories and adventures he comes up with with regards to his own little 1/87 scale fantasy world.
And yes, he can work both the Zephyr and the UT4 throttles. He doesn't know the numbers for all the switches, but he can even remotely work the turnouts from the base station (though he usually just flips them manually). If only he put that much focus on his school work!
If, as it sounds, he is anything like me at that age, his school work is boring and too simple.
And they say Digitrax is hard to use....
I wasn't much for moving the vehicles around on the layout, other than the trains, but I also had quite the collection of matchbox cars and trucks, I remember at one point taking a leftover piece of plywood and painting roads on it to driv emy cars and trucks around. I was a bit too old for it when the Tyco US1 Electric Trucking sets came out, but I got a set and some extras anyway. Slot cars with pins front and rear so you could back up, but it was all various types of trucks. Most of the accessories were tinplate level to make them actually work, generally by backing your truck into the device and the wheel would spin a wheel in the base to drive the loading or unloading action, then when you went forward the accssory drive wheel had a one way pawl so the truck would drive off. They even had switch tracks.
So the other night, he gets really, really upset when I'm trying to put him to bed. From out of nowhere, he starts balling his eyes out because our layout is too small to run a Big Boy. "Dad, you made it to small and we'll never have a big boy on my layout. And that's the dream of my whole life..." He's six. Cute at tragic at the same time.
I too lusted after those in the AHM catalog when I was 6. The Allegheny and Challenger, too. I remember seeing them lined up at the hobby shop, too. But we had the same prooblem, no room to make a bigger layout (and it was only up from Thanksgiving to New Year). Closest we ever got was a streamlined Hundson, and even for that my Dad had to rig an extra extension all around the table to run a wider radius loop, which was the only one it could negotiate. Everything else ran anywhere on the layout. (well, only the little 0-4-0 Flyer diesel could make it around the trolley loop in the middle..)
We've got a AHM 4-6-2 Pacific that was my 2nd decoder install that sufficed for a while. Now he knows the difference. We saw the Challenger in North Platte earlier in the summer. He keeps asking me when we are going back to Cheyenne to take the steam shop tour...
Both my little bozos(7 and 4) love trains.
Currently albeit slowly working on an around the walls type layout in the older boys room.
We are members of the Lake Shore Model Railroad Association(Chicago) and a couple weeks ago he(older one) put together and ran a 90 car train by himself while I was working on an engine/throttle issue with some of our other stuff.
Last night he was getting himself from Calumet Yard to Pine Island by himself while doing some switching. The guys are good to him and I allow him a free hand(though observed) and the stuff he can do or picks up on never ceases to amaze me. The little ones are also huge sponges on learning things, especially when interested.
He has also built Accurail kits, weathered some cars and torn down a P2K GP30 for a Dad rebuild.
I also teach him that everything we build gets tested, checked with NMRA gauge, Kadee coupler height gauge and weighed on a postal scale. That way when we go to the club we can run trains, not chase problems.