I have told my story before, but here goes.
As a child, in the 1960's, my father was a "holiday modeler". That is he set up a Christmas Garden that was more of a scale model railroad than a train set. It was HO scale, it consisted of the typical "modeler" products of the day, including many "craftsman" type kits.
This layout was pretty large for a Christmas Garden, two 5x9 platforms, which filled half our living room every holiday season from Thanksgiving until well after the new year.
Two loops of TruScale wood roadbed track, Aristo Trolley Bus, cars, locos and structures from kits - not your typical RTR train set stuff.
When I turned 10, we moved into a house with a basement, and that Christmas the layout was set up in the basement - with multi level trackage, plaster mountains, hidden stagging tracks and more - truely a model railroad.
I was very interested and learned even more very quickly. I guess my father could tell I was ready, and in short order the new permanent layout in the basement was mine.
With some guidance from him, I begain adding new features, building kits, first Athearn blue box, later wood kits like Silver Streak, and before long even Mantua locomotives.
We had a local hobby shop, and by age 14 I was working there, repairing trains, selling trains, and learning even more from the owner.
Shortly after that, I became one of the few junior members accepted into the Severna Park Model Railroad Club (featured in MR many times) were I learned scenery and structures from Logan Holtgrewe, hand laid track and wiring from Sam Shepherd, and much more from all the great modelers there.
Later as an older teen and young adult I worked in another hobby shop, eventually managing the train department for several years.
I stayed an active member of the Severna Park group until I moved a little farther away, I have build several layouts and been active in several other groups in the 50 years since my father build me that first layout.
So my whole modeling experiance personally is with HO scale, unlike many, I never had a LIONEL train as a child.
I also built my share of plastic models and dabbled in gas powered R/C cars in the 80's.
Quite a while back I carefully narrowed my interest in model trains and have a very carefully defined set of goals for my current layout project.
I have never really been a random "collector". Mybe that is not in my nature, or maybe my early exposure/access to so much model railroad product relieved me of some need to "own" it all.
But, I only buy stuff that applies to the layout. In 50 years I have only sold off a few pieces here and there, and I still have a reasonable percentage of the items from that very first layout........
My modeling interest can be called "Protolance" with my ATLANTIC CENTRAL which interchanges with the C&O, B&O and WESTERN MARYLAND. It is set in 1953.
I still use DC, I have radio throttles, I have signaling and CTC. The layout theme is a small city with a division point yard, industries, and lots of stagging for prototype operations and good display operations.
I buy todays RTR, but I still kit build and kit bash, scratch build a few things.
Layout progress on the latest version has been slow recently do to lots of family stuff, but I hope to speed things up soon.
Like others in this hobby, I'm a builder/tinkerer. My other hobbies/skills include restoring/hot rodding cars, restoring old houses, carpentry/cabinet making, electronics design, building HiFi speakers.
Sheldon