What got you started in the rairaod modeling hobby ?

[Rick Martin]

I really never thought much about it until I saw the question in the forum. I guess it started with some used Lionel trains about 1954-55. My grandpa put a 4x8 table on the back porch and after having a guy in town convert some of my old Marx stuff to Lionel couplers I was hooked. Lost interest when I went into the Navy and picked it back up when I went to work in a large hobby shop in Florida. I managed the model RR dept and got hooked on N (1972-73) then switched to HO. Always favored the PRR (Standard RR of the World, ya know). My grandpop worked as a fireman for the P Co. before WW1 and he really enjoyed looking through my copies of Pennsy Power (both volumnes). Never had room for a layout anywhere though I tried to get the captain of the USS John F Kennedy to let me build a layout in the forward hangar bay. Apparently he thought the railroad would get in the way of the aircraft. Imagine that! Not really too active now since there's no club anywhere near where I live and I live in a tornado magnet mobile home with little space. I've been more active in Military modeling in IPMS and have been busy sending modeling suppllies to our troops in Iraq and Afganistan. There are a lot of modelers over there and I usually throw a few magazines (including Model Railroader, etc.) into every shipment. Thats basically how I got into this hobby many years ago. I think my grandpop was a big inspiration.       Rick Martin

[PFS]

My son (now 2 1/2) loves trains of all kinds, didnt take much for me to follow.

[steam618lover1]

 Steam618lover1 Solon Oh

   I recieved my first train set when i was eight years old, in 1956 a revelle HO train set, today i still have the original cars, but traded the diesel loco for an 0-6-0, and a 0-4-0, because i am a steam fanatic, i have 40 steam engines and 250 cars all from the 50's up to now, i am a collector of old locos, i would say my dad got me started into the hobby, its a great hobby, since i'm on total disability, my train collection and tractor pulling keep me going on in life, what realy got me hook line and sinker, was when the N&W where still running the 765, 1218, and the 611, i was able to go aboard the 765, i have one dream, i found a place in ely nevada, where you can rent a steam locomotive, and through some training you can operate a real steam loco on mainline, i'm working on this dream and hoping within the next few years i can make this happen.   thank you for listining   Earl

                                                           

      

[Anonymous]

I got started when I inhereted my great-grandfather's HO trains.

[gandydan57]

            What got me started was my 10 yr old son asking my mother if he could have his grandfathers trains.

            We went to the LHS to get more track and found out that brass track was not up to par, so I bought a new train set with NS track and away we went.

            My now 21yr old is into cars and girls, every once in awhile he dabbles in the hobby, but not for long.

            Me, now thats another story. Once he got me started, I have'nt stopped since.

[Gandy Dancer]

His house backed up to the (then) Dent Subdivision of the U. P.  There was the "Columbine" in the morning, and then a parede of freights in the afternoon - all steam!

Wow, The Dent branch is about 5 blocks to the west of my current house.  East Lake, which used to be the first passenger stop North of Denver, is supposed to become a light rail station.

[GKC1839SLC]

I woke up in the middle of Christmas Eve night in 1953 to the sound of a Lionel 4-6-4 Hudson 2055 chugging and whistling.  I was 8 years old.  In the morning (5:30 AM) I raced to the living room expecting to see the train.  Boy was I ever bummed out when it wasn't there.  I was in a general funk and highly unsociable until about 9:00 AM when my parents forced me to go eat some breakfast.  I found the train set up on the kitchen table.  After that, all was right with the world.  Over the next few years the basic oval was added to with four switches and a cross over, more cars, and a 4X8 platform that went into my bedroom.  We made a paper mache tunnel, which the dog eventually ate.

The trains were put away when I was about 14, when we moved to a new house.

After getting married and in my early 20's (1965), I bought an HO set and set it up around the Christmas tree.  Being in the military at the time, it was difficult to set up anything permanent and the trains languished in storage until my son was about three years old (1975).

We build a layout in our covered patio, added more cars, locomotives, and switches.  I also had a modular Time Saver layout that I took on deployments with me.  The enviroment proved too harsh, the brass track would corrode with the moisture, and cat hair gummed up much of the workings.  By 1980 all the trains were back in the box.

A year ago, my three-year old grandson, who was ga ga over Thomas the Tank Engine and trains in general prompted me to break out some of the trains and show them to him.  Well, they were such a hit, that I was unable to resist the urge to comandeer the basement bedroom and turn it into a train room.  Of course now, having much more disposable income, I had to go with the latest technology, DCC, nickle-silver track, and Kadee couplers all around.  I even got around to adding the detailed interiors for my passenger cars that I had purchased in the 70's but never got a chance to install. 

All too soon, I didn't have much disposable income left. 

Oh well, it sure is fun to run trains with the little munchkin. 

[ChuckDaMN]

My father worked for the Great Northern RR for over 30 years, and then with the Burlington Northern after the merger.  He bought my brother and I a small HO set when we were very young.  It was in our blood.  After he died in 1971 we continued to model and had a small layout built from an atlas track plan.  My brother has expanded it and changed it's direction.  I am currently building a small switching layout based on a layout designed by Ian Rice.

 -Chuck Davis

[calledkevinalot]

When I was very young, my family and I lived close to what was then a major yard of the L&N Railroad -- I saw trains every day!  Whenever I went to town with my Dad, I used to want to be stopped by a train at the crossing, waving at the man in the caboose when it went past!  Seeing my enthusiasm for trains, my Dad and Mom bought me an O-gauge Marx train set for Christmas when I was 4, but it was when they got me an HO-gauge set later at age 7 or 8 that my love for the hobby was firmly cemented (as well as my gauge of choice).

[FreddV]

Spending time at a friends house during summer a couple of years ago. It turned out he had a trainroom upstairs (with his handicapt son) and a lot of reading materials about MRR in the living room. I needed a hobby then and found the many aspects of MRR very interesting. I bought a small N-scale trainset to try things out and build a miniture landscape to practice.

Then I remembered the train in the village where I grew up and found a website about it. As it turned out the guy behind that site provided me with a lot of info, pictures and digital copies of the original yardplans and stationbuilding.  So now I can literally measure out the place of each track and building and lantern post etc. Together with aerial pictures of the time I want to model (1930s) I have all the info that I need to build it in detail.

So thats what I'm working on bit by bit, everything from scratch. Even though I dont even have the table up yet I've spend many enjoyable hours already just designing and building parts.

[greatesthobby]

First a Rivarossi catalogue I saw when I was a kid in the 60s and then December 1996 issue of Model Railroader I found in a newsstand, with Bob Collett's wonderfully detailed Huntington and Hartford layout and the N scale Carolina Central layout on which I've been trying to work since last winter. 

[PennValleyRR]

My father had been a conductor, and my uncle was an engineer for the Wabash, and another uncle was a street car conductor, so I am a member of the "in the blood" group. I received a Lionel 027 set at age three, and have worked for the Rock Island, and at the Conway Scenic in New Hampshire. I have a small HO DC layout with a couple of sound equipped engines, and a large collection of cars and engines, along with some G guage for outside (someday). I currently operate a 2 foot guage live steamer at a tourst attraction. Trains are a part of my life!

[larrydes]

One of my grandfathers was a passenger station agent for the Rock island and a freight station agent for the Pennsylvania where they crossed in Chicago.  My uncle was a track supervisor for the Illinois Central.  I later worked as a switchman and then a surveyor for the Grand Trunk Western.  We (my brothers and I) had both a Lionel O27 and an American Flyer S-gauge train sets.  I have two N-scale old timer sets of my own. I started a N-scale layout from a magazine, and had nearly operational when we made our last move, so it got moved too (it is a 3' x 6' layout).  There is no room at this house, so the layout is standing on edge in the car-port waiting for a place to set it up and repair it.  It got damaged in the move.  We still have boxes to un-pack, so it will be a little while before I can get started.  I have loved trains for many years, probably starting nearly 70 years ago.

[ukrailroader]

It's in my blood. One grandfather worked at the Hunslet Engine Company buildimg locos and my other grandfather was a track maintenance man for the London, Midland and Scottish railway. Both sadly no longer with me.

[jims trains]

Don't laugh this is a true story.

I got into model railroading because I liked trains.  Always have always will.  Anyway I have a habit of biting my fingernails.  MY parents said that if I quit biting my fingernails that I could get a trainset.  A month later I had a brand spanking new train set.

I bite my fingernails again BTW

-Smoke

Did you get another train set when you gave up the second time?

I grew up next to a steep grade on a narrow guage tourist railway. The trains would really labour up those hills with 10 or 11 passenger cars, sometime double heading, and often I would sit at the window and watch then make their way slowly up the hill.

Me and my Dad joke about my interest in model railroads being genetic, and it was him that really started me on the road to actually having a layout. But the first layout we had was a real flop - we had no idea how to build a layout.Dad gave up the idea of building a layout then, but Mum (yep, that right) made the next layout as a simple oval with station, and I think it had one spur. 

That layout lasted a while, but eventually I outgrew it, and from then on I have built my own layouts. Now when my Dad visits us, we normally spend at least half a day out in the train room. I model HO. Nearly always have, probably always will.

[oldyardgoat]

The proverbial Lionel set (from Sears) for Christmas, 1947.  That same year I spent some weekends at my uncle's place outside Denver.  His house backed up to the (then) Dent Subdivision of the U. P.  There was the "Columbine" in the morning, and then a parede of freights in the afternoon - all steam!  Just about anything that UP had, from 2-8-2s to Big Boys (usually on a break-in run sfter being shopped at Cheyenne).  Of course, I was too young to know to write down engine numbers-I was too young to know how to write.  Just last month I got to hear a beautiful steamboat whistle as No. 844 came by on its way to Seattle.  Am I lucky, or What! 

ardenastationmaster 

[Milwhiawatha]

back in the 80s when I was a kid my dad had a layout set up from items given to us by his cousin when he went off to college. Well back then I thought it was fun to watch the trains fly off the rails and hit the walls now dont freak out they were Tyco and Rivarossi steamers (this one h urt a little when I found out it wasnt cheap) Anyway we ended up moving and reside where my parents moved to, Likely and Unfortunately I'm still with my parents due to medical conditions on my mother. About 12 yrs ago I started to dabble in the hobby due to we wanted a Christmas train that went through the Dickens village. I then got interested in 1999 all the way and started getting Model Railroader for my birthday now I'm on my second layout and over 10,000 invested between my father and I and still going strong.

[hogheadmt]

 My Father's sister worked for the Marx Toy Co in Erie, PA.  My Dad got two O-27 sets from his sister: a NYC steam freight train & an AT&SF passenger train in silver & red warbonnet.  We'd set it up around Christmas time & the first memory I have of it was when I was 5 years old.  Later in 1964 (9 yrs old) I purchased the August issue of MR & have been hooked ever since.  Currently modeling in HO, I have tried Nscale in the past & currently have LGB G scale for the back yard (someday).  Right now I'm in the process of building a layout based on the Hilliards branch of the Bessemer & Lake Erie RR. in Pennsylvania.

[KidatHeart06]

My earliest memories are a train under the Christmas tree. "O" guage Lionel and Plasticville Buildings. It was my Uncle's when he was a kid and he gave it to me. When I was 10, my Dad and I went to a train store in Chester PA and I bought my first train set. An HO work train made by Fleischmann. Still have it. Next was a Pennline B&O Passenger train. I was hooked. From there it just grew. It also helped living about 8 miles from Mitchels Hobby Shop in Wimington DE. They carried all kinds of goodies. Very reasonable too! I believe they're still in business in the same spot.

[Hawks05]

Well I had a train as a kid and everything, most do, but I never stuck with it. I was more into playing with Legos, G.I. Joes, and cars. I was also big into playing sports as well.

My junior year of high school I went to a friends house to help him set up a username for a fantasy basketball league. Our family's had been friends for years and his grandma was my babysitter growing up. Well his dad asked me to come check something out and it was his train room. I fell in love right away with the trains. The scenery and everything, the looks of the trains as they moved along the tracks, the yard he had. Everything was so cool and so interesting and it was something that I wanted to know more about. I talked to his dad for awhile about how much it cost and everything and figured it would be better than spending all my money and drugs and alcohol and it would keep me out of trouble, not like I was getting into any to begin with.

I came home and talked it over with my parents and we figured out a place I could put the trains. Although it wasn't much space it was enough to make use for now. I'll be moving out totally within the next 3-4 years hopefully as I'll be out looking for jobs.

Although I don't do much work I still have the passion for the hobby. I may stray from time to time but I always enjoy looking at my train collection, as I've spent over $2000 on my trains in the last 4 years, something I find impressive for a broke high school/college student. I love going to the hobby shop or train show and looking at everything thinking about what it'll look like when I finally have my own place and room to have a legit layout. Till then I'll just look at pictures online and read the magazines. 

[railroadinmedic]

 

Well, My Grandpa worked in the RR yards in Frankfort Ind for 38 years, and my Dad worked in the yards for a couple of years, then gave me his HO set when I was a kid. So, it would seem with family working in them and living next to the RR's growing up, I would say the passion is in the blood !

[steemtrayn]

"Train" was the first word I learned to spell. When I was around 3 years old, my father took me to see a large train display with trains running all over the place. At the time, I didn't know where it was, but I remembered seeing a Keystone sign mext to a large mock-up of a steam locomotive front...later learned it was Lionel's New York showroom. Being able to look out my bedroom window in Little Silver, N.J. and see K4's, Camelbacks, sharks and CNJ Train Masters also helped the "infection" along. On my 7th birthday, I came home to find an HO layout in my room that my father had been secretly building in the basement, complete with scenery, a Tyco B&O F7 set, and a Varney ten-wheeler. It was around this time I was learning to tell the difference between toy trains and scale models.                                                                                                                             Fifty years later, I'm still in the hobby, even still have my third loco, an AHM 0-4-0 camelback.                                                

[SilverSpike]

When I was 5 years old my first train set was a used Marx 3 rail metal set with tracks mounted on top of a 4X8 plywood framed base that was given to the family. It sat on the floor in the kids room and I played with it all the time.

 

[secondhandmodeler]

I was cleaning out my mother's basement so she could move.  I had complelety forgotten about our old trains from the late eighties.  Since i got married four years ago, my wife ran off all of my friends.  I am slowly reverting back to a ten year old kid!  I use to put together plastic models when I was younger as well.  It's amazing how many things I've had to buy like paint, paint brushes, exacto knife, track joiners, etc.  I was thinking I could starting running trains and not spend any money on them, boy was I wrong!  I think being a social person, doing a fairly private hobby is why I decided to join this forum.  I don't know anybody else who models trains.

[upjake]

It was the proverbial Lionel trains as a kid that got me started.  I can still remember my father bringing out his UP passenger train he got as a kid and assembling "Plasticville" around the layout.  I moved to HO scale later on in the teen years with the Athearn 'minor assembly' freight car kits and locos until Life-Like started coming out with their Proto stuff.

After giving up the hobby for a number of years, I discovered N scale some years back and was totally amazed with this small scale and the possibilities it offers for layouts.  Haven't looked back since then.  The quality stuff that keeps being released and improved in N scale is incredible.

There are so many railroads to choose from but my favorites are GN, UP, Soo Line, Milwaukee, C&NW (or CMO the Omaha Road) through MN and Wisconsin. 

The main thing I like about model railroading is being able to recreate the outdoors (scenery) with summer greenery, moutains, etc. plus creating your own little towns and I guess world.  Plus re-living the long gone past of fallen flag roads/steam engines/the "glory days".  The little figures or people sets (like from Preiser) are so fun placing around a layout.

 

[SOU Fan]

I bite my fingernails again BTW

Why, sounds like it was pretty easy to quit if you put your mind to it.  Just say "no".

It's harder than you think.  I am trying to stop biting them though.

 

-Smoke

[yougottawanta]

I started this hobby as a way to be home with and involve my family (vs Golfing which I look comical at trying) a way to relax. Plus when I was knee high to a grass hopper I had a friend who started it and from then on I feel i n love with the engines,cars etc... What got you started? And which scale do you model  N (Dave W) HO,O,G ON 30 ? 

I was on a four week TDY at Vandenburg Air Force Patch back in 1962 when the Air Force stranded me there for three extra weeks completely bereft of party money so-o-o-o-o-o-o I bought the July MR and RMC to tide me over and I haven't had any party money since!!!

I model in N Scale but I was an HO Scaler for twenty years. 

Well, I think you made a better investment any way !

[R. T. POTEET]

I started this hobby as a way to be home with and involve my family (vs Golfing which I look comical at trying) a way to relax. Plus when I was knee high to a grass hopper I had a friend who started it and from then on I feel i n love with the engines,cars etc... What got you started? And which scale do you model  N (Dave W) HO,O,G ON 30 ? 

I was on a four week TDY at Vandenburg Air Force Patch back in 1962 when the Air Force stranded me there for three extra weeks completely bereft of party money so-o-o-o-o-o-o I bought the July MR and RMC to tide me over and I haven't had any party money since!!!

I model in N Scale but I was an HO Scaler for twenty years. 

[Gandy Dancer]

I bite my fingernails again BTW

Why, sounds like it was pretty easy to quit if you put your mind to it.  Just say "no".