So my secret is out.
Up till now, my two youngest (four years and two years old) have been blissfully ignorant that Dad has something trainy going on in the basement. A trip with Mom to the laundry machines ended that, for better or worse. Adventures have ensued:
- carrying the two-year-old, following a slow-moving NYC Hudson as it crawled around a twenty-foot, partially completed mainline. Four feet from the end of the rails, the loco goes berserk and charges at full speed. Push the thing sideways off the rails (foam there, no damage) and turn to find a smiling four-year-old with a throttle knob in her hand.
- doing laundry in the next room over with mini-me (the two-year-old) in tow. Hear the train room door clunk as a small hand pushes it open. Finish what I’m doing, head for the train room, find a p2k 0-8-0 project loco dumped almost on the rails. Standing on a chair nearby is a happy two-year-old waving an unsheathed exacto knife around and cackling with laughter.
No injuries or damage inflicted. Yet...
Streamlined steam, oh, what a dream!!
Working on laying track and soldering rail joiners.
Son, about ten at the time, stopped in to see what I was up to. "Don't touch that soldering iron — it's HOT" I remind him.
Six seconds later I hear "OUCH"!
Twenty years later we still have a laugh over that one.
Some people seem to have a propensity to ignore warnings. Human nature, I guess
Cheers! Ed
The kid loved Thomas, so I had a 5' x 10' sheet of plywood that I set up on saw horses and eventually, it was crammed full of everything Thomas. We had three or four good years playing with that thing. The legs on the saw horses were made longer over that period of time as well.
He had dozens of engines and dozens of cars and the biggest spaghetti track plan you have ever seen. He also had five or six battery operated engines that we would consist and we would carefully set in mid-train helpers as those little magnet couplers weren't conducent to keeping long trains together.
He started to approach that age where maybe he was getting a little old for Thomas and for the life of me I can't remember when that was. One day he asked if had Thomas when I was little and I told him, no I had an Electric train. Then he asked what happened to it. I told him that it was down in the crawlspace.
We ventured over to the pantry cupboard and lifted the hatch and proceeded on the long perilous adventure into the crawlspace to recover the "Lone Star Treble O" model railroad I had spent a large part of my childhood playing with along with my Dad.
Thomas was put in a very large Tupperware trunk and on that same 5' x 10' sheet of plywood up went the trains of my childhood.
They had been in the boxes for about forty years and they were rubberband drive. I put some orthodontic rubber bands on the loco's as the old ones were dust. We had enough track to do justice to the 5' x 10' sheet of plywood and when we turned it on, that steam loco looked up at me and said: "it's about time you came back".
It was played with by the two of us often and by me late at night. One day we were running a train and the steam loco burst into smoke. Upon further examination, the other engines were about to do the same.
It appeared they used bakelite on the motors and though we were allowed a significant period of time to enjoy them once again the bakelite crumbled and that lead to the end of that layout.
It was not long after that, I decided I needed a layout for those midnight decompression sessions and cleared out the room I now use.
It had a Grand Piano in it and one weekend while my wife was at a dog show I moved it into the living room. She walked in through the front door and said: "I see you have started on your layout".
The rest is history.
Brent
"All of the world's problems are the result of the difference between how we think and how the world works."
Brent, that’s a great story. Certainly better than my tales of toddler endangerment...
Thank you!
Thanks, Rastafarr.
It was a little poignant for me while writing it as he leaves for Ottawa in the morning for his second year of University.
My daughters all thought the train were dumb and embarassing.
.
Then they would get mad when their friends woudl think the trains were neat or cool. Especially of it was their boyfriends.
My girls had no interest in my trains. The middle one played with Brio trains for a few years, but nothing electrical.
-Kevin
Living the dream.
My 4 year old daughter isn't too interested in my N scale layout, but knows to be careful around dadddy's toys.
But last month my wife's friend came to visit, and their 4 year old tried running my BLI ES44 like it was a wooden train, and pressing the exhaust to make it move. Somehow it came out unharmed, but my operating grade crossing needed some glue :\