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.
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).
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
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.
ardenastationmaster wrote: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!
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.
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