As is the story with many folks, I got my first introduction to "trains" from "Santa Claus" on a snowy Christmas Morning in the early 1970s. From what I can remember, it was an HO Scale F9 set that Tyco painted in yellow Union Pacific colors. Or something Tyco thought was close to UP colors. LOL Santa had also built me, alongside the oval of brass track, the quintessential Placticville "Suburban Station" and a not so common Faller "B-217 Retro Gas Station" kits. I think I got to play with it off and on that day because ... it didn't run well. Then not at all. Santa had apparently dropped the loco on Christmas Eve by accident (it had some masking tape wrapped around the shell) when setting up the track. The next day after Christmas Day ... it got returned "to the North Pole" by my father ... who then went to our local hobby store/soda fountain/drug store and pieced together an HO Scale Southern Pacific SD-45 set. Which as a kid, I ran the wheels off. Back then, as now, the hobby was way too expensive for my parents so I never really got into an expansive layout. And then "life" kind of got in the way - good and bad events. Now many decades later, I had Santa bring (and not drop) my young son a "pieced together" Union Pacific HO Scale F9 set similar to what I first got right down to the suburban station and Faller gas station. Together, we are assembling a proper "mobile" layout that has PVC pipe benchwork and a layout top with secured track that can be disassembled quickly and stowed behind the door in his room. But I'm as rusty in this hobby as the unused track that runs near my home, so here I am to ask questions and learn.