What was your first layout like?

[Lone Wolf and Santa Fe]

joe323

I think it depends on your definition of layout.  My earliest memories of trains are The Child Guidance Railroad, a precursor to today wooden Thomas trains but in plastic.

My first electric train set was an 0-27 set with one siding that I built on a piece of Homosote in high school
 

I had two Child Guidance sets, or maybe it was three. I always remember two of them with gray track and then for Christmas when I was about four or five I got one with red track and a locomotive that was battery powered.

To anyone wanting to get young kids into model railroading that is where to start because young kids are very hands on so trains that are hand powered are perfect.

I also had Lionel 0/27 trains when I was eight years old. I never got to build a permanent layout with them. I would play with them on Friday night but they had to be put away by Sunday night. So I don't consider them to be a layout. I did plan to build one but I went into HO instead (as described above) when we moved into a house with an empty garage.

 

[IRONROOSTER]

I remember as a child coming across a sheet of plywood (maybe 4x6) with S gauge track on it.  Never saw the trains.  My brothers and I played with HO trains on the floor - not exactly a layout either.

When I was 24, I got into trains as a hobby and built an HO 4x8 layout following a plan in the back of John Armstrong's Track Planning for Realistic Operation (1st edition).  It used Atlas track and turnouts.  I ran Tyco trains and built Atlas structure kits - station, lumberyard, signal tower.  It lasted about 6 months until  my first son was born and I had to give up the spare bedroom.

Paul

[slammin]

My first HO scale layout was a U-shaped walk in layout, roughly 8 x 14, with a lift out at the open end for continuous running. 22" radius, single track main line with several industrys and a small engine servicing facility. I started it in 1961, but cars and girls kept it from being finished! 

[ATLANTIC CENTRAL]

My first layout, actually built mostly by my father when I was 9/10, was two 5x9 platforms in an "L" shape.

HO scale, two complete seperate loops of track, grades, bridges, some of it "double track", some areas not.

Track and turnouts were TruScale, some "Ready Track", some "Self Gauging" that I learned how to lay and spike the rail.

A large plaster mountain actually hid two "staging sidings" across the back and the layout could store three trains in addition to the two running.

The layout was completely sceniced with plaster on screen wire mountains, LifeLike "grass and dirt" glued down, trees, black painted plaster roads, etc. Lots of structures, both plastic and wood kits. And a few "built ups" of that time from Ideal.

The layout also featured lighted buildings, Aristo Trolley Bus system, and as time went on I added sidings and industries.

Equipment consisted of a collection of Athearn and Varney freight cars, plastic and metal. A Varney F3 set, Mantua Mikado and Pacific, PennLine GG1, Athearn heavy weight passenger set, etc.

I still have some of that rolling stock and several of the structures my parents built.

That was around 1967.......

Sheldon 

[Track fiddler]

I'll be really honest here.  My first N gauge layout was an oval on a 2x3 piece of plywood.  It had an underlayment of that green paper sawdust grass. It had nine inch radius 90 degree pre-made curves.  And the green tan and white styrofoam tunnel with the grey portals,  remember those.  Later I brought sand out of the alley and glued it on the outside edges of the track and thought that was ballast.  I was only seven years old and was pretty proud of that at the time.  For a generous portion of years I started and built two more layouts and then took a 35 year break.

[emdmike]

My very first trains sets(Tyco HO) never made it past the carpet central phase on Christmas morning as I burned up the motors.  But my following birthday in March they were replaced with a MPC era Lionel set and a 4x6 table I had to help my mother pickup from a garage sale.  So for the next several years Lionel trains and various buildings that as I grew older turned into Dept 56 Christmas buildings dominated my layout.   Mike

[n2mopac]

When I build my first layout I was in my late 20's, moved a lot, and didn't have much budget. I had planned to build an HO layout, but due to the considerations I just stated I decided to try a small, portable N scale layout just to practice some techniques. It was 4X4 with a loop of track, a passing siding, and 3 industrial spurrs. It modeled a small, midwestern town served my Mopac/UP in their merger era of the early 80's. The railroad served a lumber yard, a grain elevator and feed store, and a furniture wareshouse. It had a hill with a cut made with hydorcal cast rocks, a creek and pond, and lots of trees. It also had a small Main St/downtown area. It was a lot of fun to build. I so fell in love with N scale that 2 years later I sold all of the HO stuff that I had collected and wen all in with N scale. Now, 20 years and 2 layouts later, I have never regretted that decision.