In my case I would say it was the real trains first. My mum and my grandfather had both worked for the LMS in clerical capacities, so there was some family connection. As a child in the 1950s and '60s we would travel by train to visit my grandparents in the north west of England, which was one of the last bastions of steam right up to its final withdrawal in 1968. One of my vivid early memories is the sound of a steam loco safety valve blowing off in the dark and smoky confines of the old Euston Station - I'd like to think I can remember the famous Doric arch in the station as well, but that might be wishful thinking. I had an uncle who was a draughtsman at the Vulcan works, and after hours he would let me climb over the locos under construction (no "elf and safe tea" regulations in those days). By that time Vulcan had ceased building steam locos, but many of the diesels I climbed on were for export to Africa and I probably saw the same ones in action later in life.
I was a teenager before I got seriously involved model railways, joining the Ilford and West Essex Model Railway Society (the third oldest model railway club in the country), which I could get to by train using my free school travel pass, and which was on land rented from British Rail and which could be accessed by walking off the end of the platform and squeezing between the track and the bridge - again no health and safety concerns then.
When I moved to Africa after university my railway activities, both full scale and model, were put on hold, although I still collected odd bits and pieces which would be eventually be used in modelling. I got back into real life railways about 25 years ago when I spent a year in UK and began training as a volunteer steam locomotive fireman on the preserved Dean Forest Railway, and then in South Africa where I qualified as a mainline fireman and depot driver (shedman in local terminology, maybe hostler in USA?) Back in Kenya, I now volunteer at the railway museum in Nairobi, and help to operate the steam locos on the rare occasion when they are in steam.
I got back into model railways after more than 40 years when we moved to a new house in the Kenyan bush two and a half years ago, and she who must be obeyed allowed me to start building a model railway in an outbuilding (actually a forty foot shipping container). It's an African profile layout, in OO/HO scale.
steve-in-kvilleI actually meant for you as an individual. I edited my post to clarify. I am rather new to the hobby. Took my first real train ride this past summer and have been fascinated since. I do some track-side watching at least once a week. My children are showing interest in model trains, hence my entrance into the hobby.
I saw and was conscious of toy trains long before I saw real trains. I was probably 2 when I got my first toy trains. That wasn't a hard answer.
Rio Grande. The Action Road - Focus 1977-1983
For me, it was a love for watching trains early on due to my step-grandfather working for the Wabash/N&W/NS and hearing stories from a great-uncle who worked for the UP in Wyoming. I received a trainset for Christmas when I was five but didn't really get in model trains until junior high.
I have to agree with Sheldon on the eras. I have very few locomotives that could still be found on today's railroads. I still will stop for any train I see and like to take drives to see various railroading spots, but I guess I understand how people before me felt: All diesels now look the same! I know there are differences and I think I can tell the difference between a GE and an EMD (or whatever the companies are now called). But I did like seeing the different locomotives before comfort cabs and SD70's and so on. I'm sure a good part of that is nostalgia but again, it's just me and my opinion!
cv_acr steve-in-kville I was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling. That's bollocks. I know several railfan friends that have zero model interest at all.
steve-in-kville I was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling.
That's bollocks. I know several railfan friends that have zero model interest at all.
I agree, and I know lots of modelers with little or no interest in "railfanning".
Here is a theory, at least half, and maybe more like 2/3 to 3/4 of model railroaders have a primary interest in trains for eras other than present day.
Their modeling is "historical" by nature. Watching modern trains in real life today has little or no connection to modeling 1954 as it is in my case.
Not to say they can't also be interested in present day railroading, but clearly one hobby does require the other.
Sheldon
steve-in-kvilleI was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling.
Chris van der Heide
My Algoma Central Railway Modeling Blog
My dad told me that I loved watching real trains when I was 3-4 years old. He said I was just mesmorized by them moving around. From watching the real thing while really small to loving the hobby.
My Dad has never been much of a model railroader, but a lifelong rail fan. When I was a little toddler, he used to take me to the train station on weekends. Steam was still king, then, and seeing one of the new Diesel or electric engines was considered a lucky day!
So I started out as a rail fan, but "graduated" to model railroading at the age of 7, 57 years ago.
Happy times!
Ulrich (aka The Tin Man)
"You´re never too old for a happy childhood!"
I for one remember those cereal boxes. In the mid-50s those would be served at a roadside stop on trips to visit my grandparents. My dad and my youngest uncle got a Lionel set for me at age 1 and they enjoyed it a bunch. Dad would take my brother and I on railfan trips around the Detroit area on Sundays to give our mom a break. So I'm a little of both but modeling gets most of my attention these days.
I know for me modeling came first
For me, I think it was railfan first, then modeler.
My Grandparents (Mom's side) house was a couple of blocks northeast of GE's Erie locomotive plant.
Seeing Conrail trains racing by on the old NYC 3 track main through that area, and NS single track main (including the street running segment) was something I liked. My Grandfather picked up early on my liking trains, so we would go watch them, or to a nearby museum to look at them on many occasions.
Trips to see my Grandparents were always accompanied by at least a few minutes trackside, even if it was simply on the way to or from their house.
Became a serious modeler around 12-13, with my first HO set. When I was younger, I had a couple of the various "toy trains", some battery powered, some "0-5-0” powered.
I now do "railfan" in the general sense of actively seeking trains out, oftentimes for photography purposes, other times just to enjoy seeing them roll by.
Unrelated note - I also enjoy cars, and airplanes, and anything else that is big and moves. Maybe this actually is related to liking trains....
Ricky W.
HO scale Proto-freelancer.
My Railroad rules:
1: It's my railroad, my rules.
2: It's for having fun and enjoyment.
3: Any objections, consult above rules.
rrinker Modern stuff just doesn't excite me - I'll watch if I'm at a grade crossing, or somewhere near tracks and a train goes by, but I don't actively plan to go sit trackside and watch trains. Now take me to a tourist line or museum running vintage equipment and I'll watch all day. If I were closer, I might go railfan the DL, since they run all vintage Alcos. I am 95% modeler and 5% railfan, maybe. --Randy
Modern stuff just doesn't excite me - I'll watch if I'm at a grade crossing, or somewhere near tracks and a train goes by, but I don't actively plan to go sit trackside and watch trains. Now take me to a tourist line or museum running vintage equipment and I'll watch all day. If I were closer, I might go railfan the DL, since they run all vintage Alcos. I am 95% modeler and 5% railfan, maybe.
--Randy
I'd be the opposite. The steamer bug never bit me (yet!). Being railside with a radio and listening for consists coming, trying to guess which crossing they're at and timing them before they come into view.... I could so that for a few hours.
Regards - Steve
Modeling the Reading Railroad in the 1950's
Visit my web site at www.readingeastpenn.com for construction updates, DCC Info, and more.
For me it was railfanning.
I grew up along the Delaware Division of the Erie. The house we lived in at the time was just across a back street from the double track main, a busy line that connected Buffalo NY to the New Jersey-NY metro area (Port Jervis). The small depot was right next door to a feed mill and I was fascinated by the trains as I would watch them from the front window, probably as early as 4 years old. I was especially fascinated by the local way freight as it switched cars at the rail-served feed mill.
My older brother and I got our first Loinel set when I was about 5. My brother didn't get the "train bug", so I inherited the set, which I expanded, adding a few cars and some turnouts. I held on to that Lionel equipment until, in 1992 when my wife and I moved, it was stolen by the movers, which I didn't discover some months later when i went to get it to put up under the Christmas tree. That was when I got into HO and started collecting track, turnouts, locomotives, cars, etc. back in 1993. Been hooked ever since!
American Flyer at 4 or 5. I think I remember seeing a double headed PRR steam freight, on the way to my grand parents. I was more impressed that there were 100 cars, not that they were steam engines.
I remember the Ma and Pa exactly once, crossing York Rd. in 1957 or 1958. I remember hoping I would see it again, never did, and then they tore the overpass down. Web page says "Fair use"
Henry
COB Potomac & Northern
Shenandoah Valley
First electric train was probably when I was six or seven, a smattering of cars behind a Lionel Pennsy 6-8-6 turbine. Likely my parents' response to my interest in the steamers and diesels that I saw everyday a block up the street - where the NYC 2-track mainline between Detroit and Chicago defined the northern boundary of the neighborhood. Might have had a pull-around wooden train earlier, but don't remember.
What I DO remember even before that O-guage for Christmas, were the old individual serving Kellogg's cereal boxes. Split them down the middle at the perforation, open the flaps, slice through the wax paper and pour your milk. I distinctly remember that for some time the boxes were printed as engines and freight cars. When you finished your Corn Pops, you could get rid of the soggy inside, cut away the back flaps, turn the box over and run it around with your hand on the kitchen table. Likely kept three of four for a week or two. Do any of you older guys remember these packages? Yikes - probably haven't thought about those things in 40 years!!
John
Believe me I know plenty of railfans, and accomplished and serious ones at that, names you might recognize, who have no interest whatever in model trains and do not understand the attraction they have for anybody. David P Morgan the great editor of Trains magazine for decades was said to hold model railroaders in pretty much complete disdain, and MR once published a letter from him to that effect (although from time to time Morgan would write an evocative essay for MR to accompany a particularly interesting photo of a model scene).
I have also known excellent and accomplished model railroaders who profess to have no particular interest in "real" trains or in railfanning. One such had his wonderful layout in Model Railroad Craftsman and on NMRA National Convention tours. He was not a prototype modeler either and made that view very clear to those who'd try to mention that the rolling stock on his layout crossed eras in some highly improbable ways. He was so vocal on that point that a highly regarded editor for MR refused to operate on his layout, even though the layout featured sophisticated car forwarding which should have appealed to him.
In my own case I have a clear childhood memory of seeing a slant nosed passenger diesel on the C&NW stop at our local station, and whether it was an E3 or an E6 if the memory is accurate it likely dates to no later than my age 3 or 4, and maybe earlier than that, like age 2. I know I loved seeing trains go by which happened surprisingly often going to or coming home from Sunday church, whether we walked or drove. At that same age, 3 or 4, and before I had Lionel, I had Marx wind-up trains which I loved. What is not clear to me however is that I really associated the wind up trains (approximately 0-27 sized) with real trains. I knew it was a neat and noisy toy that moved. I did realize the Lionel set that came a year or two later represented real trains, but I am just not sure about that windup set.
Thus I am tempted to say that for me, interest in real trains came before model trains. But they were so close in time that it is a coin toss.
Dave Nelson
I'm another in the "both" camp. Some of my earliest memories are my dad's trains (Lionel and Marx) and my Uncle setting up his American Flyers for Christmas. On the other hand, when we went to my Aunt's house (nearly every Sunday) we often had to stop for the Phoenix Steel train to pass by carrying very hot slag.
I've long found it interesting that for model railroaders their beginning stories are pretty much always one of two stories...either the person got a train set for a birthday or Xmas and got interested in real trains because of the models/toys, or they grew up near a train line, had a relative who was a railroader, etc. and got into model railroading because of their primary interest in real trains.
It would be fun to track say 50 of each group and see how their layouts and operating ideas etc. differed. I'm sure there would be a difference, but not sure what it would be exactly.
Anyway, for the first 46 years of my life I lived across the street from a railroad line, so I had exposure to real trains for quite a while before I became a model railroader. But my knowledge that there was such a thing as model railroading came from the weekly 15-min. local TV show sponsored by the Woodcraft Hobby Shop in Minneapolis. Without that, I might not have ever known about model railroading and might have been content to just be a 'train buff'.
Grew up next to the CNW line and a couple blocks from the EJ&E in West Chicago Illinois, so trains were always just there. Models definitely came first for me with my first train set around kindergarten.
When I re-entered the hobby a couple years ago, it was almost simultaneous that I started acquiring trains and taking photographs of the real thing. Even now I'm not a serious railfan but I take alot of pictures of trains.
Visit the Chicago Valley Railroad for Chicago Trainspotting and Budget Model Railroading.
I started out on the big stuff but models came along not much later. Here I am on C&O Berkshire 2707 at the Brookside Zoo Park in Cleveland in my dad's arms:
April_RR_C&O2707 by Edmund, on Flickr
Maybe two years later we had a rudimentary HO layout on a piece of 4 x 8 plywood painted green.
Cheers, Ed
steve-in-kvilleSo what came first for you? Models or watching the real thing?
In my case both.. My dad was a modeler and railfan so,I started both hobbies early in life. I started my solo railfan trips when I was seven on my Schwinn bicycle with a Kodak camera..That was in 1955.
Thankfully the Columbus(Oh) Union Station and PRR's Cleveland Ave yard was a few city blocks away. I saved my lunch money and allowence to buy film.
Larry
Conductor.
Summerset Ry.
"Stay Alert, Don't get hurt Safety First!"
It started with the models for me. We have video of when my dad put a train around the Christmas tree (I was about 6 months old), and my focus was totally on the train. After that, I mostly played with the battery operated toy trains my brother had lost interest in until I finally got some nicer stuff. I think I was 5 or 6 when I got my first N scale model (Bachmann PCC trolley), and eventually moved to HO.
Because of where I grew up, I didn't have much exposure to real trains. NS and Amtrak come through here, but I was too far away to just go out and watch them. What I saw was mostly in books and on TV, and my internet access while growing up was poor at best.
_________________________________________________________________
For me, modeling clearly came first. My father set up a very elaborate Christmas garden/train layout going back to when I was only two or three.
Set up permenantly as soon as we had a house with a basement, that layout was passed to me at about age 10.
We lived in the rural suburbs and there was little in the way of real trains to see, except on various trips to Baltimore.
We did have the little Baltimore & Annapolis short line, which ran one or two short trains a week, and could be seen if we happened to be near the tracks in Severna Park.
But that operation had pretty much stopped by the time I was old enough to get around on my own.
As for railfanning now, I'm not one. CSX (ex B&O mainline) and AMTRAK (ex PRR mainline) are both near my home here in northeastern Maryland, and I pass by, cross over/under them all the time. I can't say I make much effort to watch the trains.
My modeling interests are in a time before I was born, 1954. I have not kept up with the details of modern railroading, I doubt I could correctly identify any of the locos I see.
It really does not interest me, and my spare time for hobby related activities is currently limited, I'm not going to spend time on stuff that would take away from my modeling time. Maybe some day, not today.
The only "railfanning" I do, is to travel to Strasburg PA, less than an hour from my home, and ride and watch the historic trains there. Because it is so close, I am typically there three or four times a year, and have been known to just go and sit and watch trains for several hours.
In the peak season, about 10 months of the year, Strasburg runs all day, every day, seven days a week, trains every hour, sometimes every 1/2 hour from 9am to 5 or 6pm. Historic steam, pulling historic cars, on a real schedule. And steam moving real freight, as they are also provide local team track operation.
Medina1128 doctorwayne I remember watching trains (steam and diesel) while playing on the front veranda at the age of three...they ran past our house, on an elevated right-of-way, literally right across the street.
doctorwayne
doctorwayneI remember watching trains (steam and diesel) while playing on the front veranda at the age of three...they ran past our house, on an elevated right-of-way, literally right across the street.
Your parents let you play on a Veranda?? Lucky kid!
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
If by railfanning you mean the casual oservation of trains as they pass by, then that came first. And I still stop to watch a train pass by.
OTOH if we're talking about railfanning as hobby where one seeks out trains to observe; buys book and guides to be able to identify locomotives, cars, signals, etc.; keeps a record of locomotives observed; takes pictures of railroads; etc. then I'm not a railfan.
I do like reading about railroads and their history.
For me, model railroading as a hobby started when I was 22. I had trains as a child. But I wouldn't say it was a hobby as I liked racing them with my brothers trains and staging collisions.
Paul
Both at almost the same time for me. The house I spent the first 4 years of my life, was right next to the East Troy Electric Railroad.
The next Christmas in this same house, my dad gave me my first train set, a Marx.
Mike.
My You Tube
Pretty sure it was models - my parents had a large (room size) layout in what ended up being my room, so it all had to come down, but a loop was set up under the tree every Christmas. I have an 8mm silent movie of me, less than age 2, running the train. The earliest evidence I have of me interacting with a real train wasn;t until 2 years later when I went to Strasburg for the first time. Beside Stransburg and other tourist lines, the only palce I saw real trains as a youngster was at the end of the street my grandparents lived on, on the other side of a high mesh fence was where completed steel handling cars from the Treadwell Corporation were stored and picked up by the Lehigh Valley on the Easton and Northern branch. And the Summer before I started kindergarten, we camped at Hersheypark, and at the end of the road was the Reading main to Harrisburg, which I would run down to and watch the trains when I heard them.
steve-in-kville I was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling. So what came first for you? Models or watching the real thing?
I was told over on the other forum that every railfan eventually discovers the hobby of modeling. So what came first for you? Models or watching the real thing?
In my personal case, that statement is completely incorrect, which I suppose by nature of the statement makes it kind of wrong.
I‘d say I definitely started as a modeler (using the term loosely... let’s say modeler=enjoying running trains) and then as I started looking into the prototypes more I became what you might call a railfan. I would still consider myself a modeler first and then a railfan.
On the flip side I do know there are plenty of rail fans not involved in the model8ng aspect of the hobby. Still there is ALOT of overlap between the two!
Regards, Isaac
I model my railroad and you model yours! I model my way and you model yours!