Hobby status

[Anonymous]

For my entire life I have been obsessed with trains. When I was a little kid I was crazy about trains and so naturally I ended up getting toy trains. Things just progressed from there and my interest has only increased since then.

[darth9x9]

I was 3 when I had my first HO figure eight layout. I remember the sparks on the crossing. I haven't lost interest since.....

BC

[jrbernier]

I have been 'playing' with trains since I was 2 - per my mom! I went through Marx, Lionel, and American Flyer; then got into scale HO at the age of 12. I dabbled with N in 1969, and got serious with N in 1990. I went back to HO last years as my 'over 50' eyes were complaining, and most of the modelers in my area(SE Minnesota) are into HO. Layout #5 started in 1987(HO) and is still in the basement. Work sorta stopped in 1992 as I really wanted to get into N, but I could never tear down the layout(25 by 20 room). About 2 years ago I started wanting to do some scratch building and found that my eyes just were not up to it anymore. I then scratch built a reefer in HO for a contest and found that I had no problem - back to HO.
I am 7 years from retirement, and have decided to stay in the home I built in 1984 - roof, window, & utilities over the next 3 years. Then maybe I will dismantle the present layout and build a new one with code 83 rail.

Jim Bernier

[Anonymous]

As far back as I can remember. Since I was little guy I've had battery powered toys, pu***oy trains, Bachmann train sets, Tyco and all that other stuff. Now I'm in the "serious" group. Striving for realism.
Total time-- about 15 years.

[Anonymous]

I don't remember a time when I didn't have trains (I'm 40 now). The first was a Marx oval with a small plastic steam engine. My Dad made a small table in the basement where I had a loop of track with a siding. Love those big Lionel turnouts with the lights! I remember going to the flea market about once a month and every now and then I car would make its way home (the coolest was the one with the submarine on it!). Also had a Warbonnet F unit and a couple of passenger cars. It was so cool back then just watching the train go round and round and taking the siding every now and then. Played with NScale in the early 70's until I graduated college in the early 80's (anyone from the North East remember 2 Guys? They had this woman working in hobbies who apparently hated N Scale, every time we went there the stuff was 1/2 off!!!!!). Now in HO. Still love trains and always will!!

[Anonymous]

I got started when I was about 4, so about 14 years ago. It all started when me and my father would set up sectional pieces of track in the living room. I started out with a Life Like Family Lines GP38-2, a Bachmann Santa Fe F7A, an Athearn Rock Island SD40-2, and roughly 12 Bachmann and Life Like freight cars, all of which I still have today. The power pack came from a Bachmann train set and since we didn't have many rail joiners we used masking tape to hold much of the track together.

Ahh... yes, those were those days...[:)]

[on30francisco]

I've been in this hobby since 1964. I started with a big Lionel train set that my uncle gave to me. Around 1969 I started in HO scale using Atlas snap track with brass rail and some AHM and Tyco locos. Worst equipment I've ever worked with! I then discovered track with NS rail, Athern and MDC locos and rolling stock, and other quality equipment. I also tried modeling in N scale. The scenic effects were beautiful but it was too small and finicky for me to work with. Around the mid 80s, a regular column on scratchbuilding narrow gauge equipment (Narrow Nuggets by Pete Moffett) was featured in the NMRA bulletin. I built a few flatcars out of stripwood from the instructions in that column and I was hooked on narrow gauge! I modeled in On3 and tried Sn3. They were both good scales but you had to second mortgage your house to afford those extremely expensive brass locomotives(the only kind that were and are available). Consequently, I never bought a locomotive. When Bachmann came out with its line of On30 equipment I immediately jumped into that scale. Today I model in On30 and HO. Both are great scales.

[Noah Hofrichter]

QUOTE: Originally posted by 4884bigboy

My dad brought home an HO trainset when I was 6. Hooked, line and sinker.[:D][;)][(-D][(-D][swg]

[#ditto] But I got mine for a birthday present.

Noah[:p]

[CBQ_Guy]

Got into the hobby back in 1956 when, at the age of three, I received a Lionel train around the Christmas tree. Added to it little by little over the years and Dad made a table in the basement and added some scenery, buildings with lites, action accessories, etc.

At age eight we traded it all in and I got an HO passenger set and a freight set. Some extra track and switches, and MRC power pack, and set it all up on the table. I played around and added to this myself for years and when I was 13 or 14, I traded all of it in for N-scale.

Did N for a couple years but pretty much dropped out of the hobby for cars, rock and roll band and girls. Came back to the N-stuff after I was first married for a couple years but dropped out again when we moved to the country because I didn't think there was room for a layout in the basement.

About a dozen years later, or more, I was cleaning out the basement and came across the N-scale railroad stuff. Went through it and got nostalgic and thought maybe there was room for a shelf switching layout at least. Well this little shelf layout kept growing and growing and finally I realized I could clear a corner in the basement and build a 6 by 6 foot table. Was building that and starting to lay track back in the early 1990's and ran into some local modelers at the first NMRA meet I attended which that year was at a local town. I got bit hard by the HO big which was always my first love anyway, so I switched back to HO though I still have the N-scale equipment packed away for a possible layout on a door slab someday.

Somehow I managed to make room in the basement for a 17 by 13 1/2 foot room which I built, and was building and starting to operate a layout when the house I'm currently in became available unexpectedly. It is a very hard thing to do, I learned, to tear out a layout you have had so much enjoyment and happiness with. It's literally like you are tearing out a part of yourself . . . it's real and it ain't no cliche'!

The up side was when I was able to "negotiate" with SWMBT for the ENTIRE BASEMENT in the new house for a layout. So now I'm in the "room prep" stage of building it in an area of about 24 by 38...

...and LOVIN' IT!!!

[pbjwilson]

I got started in the hobby back in the late sixties with the then new N gauge trains. I received a Aurora Postage Stamp train set for Christmas. And get this, it was a Santa Fe passenger set and came with 71/2" radius curves! I think it was actually made by Minitrix and the tight radius curves were probably o.k. for european prototypes but for long passenger cars it was ridiculous. Have now modeled in N, H.O. o27, and G gauge. Presently Modeling modern CP rail in H.O.

Paul the Painter

[liquidcross]

I just started getting into it recently...which is odd, since I was VERY into trains when I was a kid. I think the recent resurgence of interest is due to me playing a lot of Railroad Tycoon II on my Dreamcast. [:D]

[IRONROOSTER]

When my wife was pregnant with our first child, I told her that for his first Christmas we had to get him a train. Well she jumped the gun by a year and bought me a trainset the Christmas before he was born. The day after that Christmas I found a magazine on the newstand called Model Railroader - November 1971 issue (this was overseas in the PX so they were late). The day after that the December 1971 issue showed up. I've been hooked ever since.
Enjoy
Paul

[brothaslide]

I received my first Tyco train set back in 1969 when I was 4 years old. I've been hooked ever since. I have been actively involved on and off since that time. It goes in spurts of insparation for me. The most progress was made about 4 years ago. I built a 12' x 14' layout in my garage. No scenery. I eventually, got bored and tore it down - I also wanted to park my car in the garage again.

I'm starting to get back into making models and building up my rolling stock fleet.

Sean

[CP5415]

I've been involved in railroading both modeling & railfanning since day one.
My Dad loved trains. He used to take my brother & I to CP's Agincourt Yard every Sunday.
He also modeled HO scale.

Gordon

[vsmith]

I voted back into it after a while.

I was doing HOn30 a about 8-9 years ago, had been trying to build two successive small but detailed layouts. The first got axed by the tiny, tiny casa I was living in. The second got blown up by frustration with the lack of quality items in that scale at the time, I got tired of using poor running small engines.

Fast forward to four years ago when we moved into our new house, it was 85 years old and had absolutly NOTHING in the back yard. So I start planning a Garden RR in G guage. Slowly I get the yard upgraded all the time planning to lay tracks in the dirt.

But after I had layed the track on the dirt for a couple of months testing the ideas, the wife comes out and says "why are you putting it there, if I build a studio there you'll have to tear it out?" "Allllrighty then, what if I put it in the garage?" says I, "Oh as long as I can park my car, i dont care" .....So now after 2 years of looking at a garden RR I'm doing an indoor RR, in G guage cause i already bought a lot of stuff.. One year of planning, started building last summer, got the track down, backdrop is half finished, and i'm planning for scenery and buildings.

thats why I seem to be on this forum more than the GardenRR forum, scenery, wiring, benchwork, weathering, its all the same as in HO or O just bigger.

I like them big trains though, Bigger is definitly Better. They got a heft that those little trains just cant match. I'm still monkeying around with my old HOn30 stuff, cant seam to shake the HO bug completley.

[Anonymous]

Thanks!! See the topic "Train GIFs" to find out more about them.

[Anonymous]

cool signature, dougal.

[Anonymous]

Just got into it means you just got into the hobby, just got back into it means that you have been a railfan/model railroader, left the hobby, and got back into it a few years (or decades in some cases) ago.

[Hawks05]

whats the difference between just got into the hobby and been in it for awhile. i've been in it since october or so. i went to my friends house to help him set up a fantasy basketball team and his dad took me to the basement and i was hooked then. came home convinced my parents to let me start and clean out a spare room and here i am today.

[slotracer]

Other....got out of it 4 years ago. I still occasionally look at a website or stop at a forum like this. Frequency of moves (every 3 years on average) lack of focus on era or road (ended up with too much stuff) and becoming distant in geography and time from what motivate my interest in railroads is the main reason I left. Also I worked for the UP in management and grew to hate railroads.
I also loved cars and my wife complained about the weekend family time I missed by racing my full size car, so I sold it and am now racing slotcars and building 1/24 car kits with my boys.
I kept all the slides I took and my small VHS collection, we look at some of it from time to time. I sold off all my books, railroadiana and massive HO collection, although my kids have a bit of n-gauge to run when the mood strikes them. We go to a train museum once in awhile, especailly near the holidays.
I got my start at age 3 with a lionel set from my grandfather which he got frm. He also would sit with me after dinner at the Lakeview restruant south of Hamburg NY to watch the NYC, PRR and NKP. I was actively involved modeling and into photography until Conrail killed things for me. Spent a couple years shooting old depots and the like before I hung up the camera in 1980. I kept modeling though and became active with photography in the mid nineties when I had moved west and tried to capture the remnants of the SP and DRGW before UP gobbled that up. I took photos for a year after the merger as UP had me travel across the system on business, but the interest was again gone so in 97 I quit shooting photos. In early 2000 I turned to ebay to dispense with the entire collection.
I might go back to the hobby someday if I ever decide the gauge, period and time fram I would concentrate on. Right now I am having too much fun building everything from Edsels to Enzo ferraris, and racing Aurora thunderjet cars again. True to my Model RR roots, my HO slot track is fully sceniced.

[88gta350]

My dad was into Lionel so naturally I got hooked as a kid. A few years later more "important" things took over my mind like girls and cars. I've recently gotten back into the hobby and hope to get my son hooked as well.

[Anonymous]

My dad brought home an HO trainset when I was 6. Hooked, line and sinker.[:D][;)][(-D][(-D][swg]

[Anonymous]

How long have you been in the hobby? Please respond and give me a story on how you got started.