How old where you when you got started in model railroading?

[Hawks05]

17. 3 months ago to be exact. back in like 1992 or so when i was 5 or so my parents got me a train set. i wouldn't say i was hooked but played with that a lot. now i'm getting hooked though. i'm spending a lot of time at the LHS, at shops and just reading about trains. so i first got serious when i was 17.

[willy6]

i was about 5 when my dad built a LIONEL track around the christmas tree.i stuck with the hobby getting HO scale stuff, got drafted during the viet-nam war ,retired from the service in 1992 and got back into it BIG TIME and a loving wife to let me do it, i'm 49 and loving it.

[Big_Boy_4005]

My mother told me that the outfit that I wore at my first Thanksgiving had a train on it. When I could crawl, I had plastic "push" trains (like Brio). When we drove the 5 mile distance to visit my grandmother, we crossed 5 different sets of railroad tracks, and sometimes we stopped at the top of a small bluff that overlooked a C&NW (ex M&StL) yard , and watched the trains. When I was 4 I got a Marx train set, and have never been without trains ever since. This will be my 30th year in the NMRA!!!!

I'm 42.[:D]Time flies when you're having fun!!!

[BNSFNUT]

Got a Lionel train in 1949 (I was 2). Switched to HO about 1960 and haven't stopped modeling since.

[brothaslide]

I was four years old when I received my first train set for Christmas.

[AggroJones]

I had various toys or whatever when I was a child. But I got into serious railroading when about 13 or 14.

[Anonymous]

1 or 2. I had a bunch of Thomas the Tank Engine stuff. Then when I was 5 or 6 my dad brought home an HO train set. I was hooked.

[randybc2003]

1st. electric train: 6 or 7 years old Christmas - Santa droped off a Williams Crooks trainset. This explains my bent toward Woodburning American Standards.

[Anonymous]

hmm well im 17 now i know its been atleat 4 years i have been railfanning so im gonna say 13 or 14 best bet.

[nfmisso]

Aound 6, when our neighbor gave use a 4x8 layout, oval with a figure 8 inside that shared one end of the oval. My dad got us a Fleischmann set to run on it, a bit later I got a Tyco F9 in Santa Fe freight.

[Anonymous]

I've been fascinated with trains since I was a kid, but I didn't really get into the hobby until my early teens (14 or so).[8D]

[Anonymous]

My dad had a house full of trains before I was born. I started working with him on the layout when I was 5, the same year he got me my first very own engine (Atlas GP38 in UP livery that I still run). I'm 26 now.

Warren

[leighant]

I didn't really get serious about model railroading until I was 3 years old, although had a train or two before that. Started with a Marx tinplate and I mean TIN. According to my baby book, the 9th word I spoke as "choo-choo."
When I studied fractions in third grade, I realized I could measure real life objects like doors, windows and houses and lay out scale models on cardboard with 1/4" = 1'. I was puzzled at first because they looked a little oversize alongside my 027 trains. I later learned my homemade buildings etc were scale, the 027 trains were undersized.

[ReadingBob]

I'm afraid I don't really remember anymore. Guess we always rain a train underneath our X-Mas tree when I was a kid and I remember getting an N scale Postage Stamp train set when I was around 10. Guess that's close enough to being Day 1!

[sparkingbolt]

17, in 1976. When I was younger, my folks wouldn't let me have a train set cuz I was too rough on my toys, and they were right.

[Anonymous]

I was a model railroader and railfan from Day 1 (I'm 12 now).