How did you get started in Model Railroading?

[Anonymous]

I've been interested in trains as long as I can remember. When you're a young boy, anything big, noisy and colourful like a train is just fascinating. Or 21, for that matter. I've always liked building models as well, be it cars, planes, or diorama scenes.

At the moment I'm starting my first proper running model railroad, just a small 4 X 7 with a figure 8 loop, but I'm looking forward to building my first layout.

[on30francisco]

I was given a huge Lionel "Super O" gauge train set with many locos, buildings (Plasticville), and many working accessories when I was a kid in the early 60s. Although it was tinplate, it was built like a tank and worked well. I traded up to HO in the late 60s when brass track and flextrack with fiber ties, Tyco, and AHM were in vogue. Needless to say, it was junk and never ran well - made me want to go back to Lionel. I then discovered Athern, MDC, Atlas and Lambert NS track, and other quality equipment. I then dabbled in N scale. Although the quality of N scale has vastly improved, in the early 70s it left a lot to be desired (especially Aurora's "Postage Stamp" series). Needless to say, I went back to HO and the narrow gauge bug bit. I then dabbled in some of the larger scales such as Sn3 (extremely pricy), On3 (very pricy) andOn30 (very reasonable cost), and recently Large Scale (some things cheaper than HO - and a scratchbuilders and superdetailers paradise). I currently model in narrow gauge Large Scale for the joy of scratchbuilding and superdetailing individual scenes, structures, and rolling stock and On30 for the excellent equipment, good details, and scenic effects such as trestles, mountains, etc that would require the space the size of a gymnasium to do in Large Scale.

[tomikawaTT]

I got my first train set (Lionel 027, real tinplate) for my first Christmas. I teethed on a box car.

Somewhere around age 4 I met a Varney Little Joe when a neighbor let the local kids have a look at his layout. At about the same time I noticed that all of the interesting things had flanged wheels running on steel rails. (3rd Avenue L, street cars and a freight line, all within a few hundred yards of my family's apartment.)

Started serious HO modeling at the age of 10, changed to HOj 13 years later, and have been at it ever since.

Chuck

[Anonymous]

When I was about 9, I went to see the Miniature Railroad and Village at the Carnegie Science Center in Pittsburgh. I really liked it and for christmas that year I got a train set and a couple buildings.My first prototype was the Santa Fe but sometime around 1994 I switched over to Conrail since I always liked conrail and it ran through my hometown.

[icmr]

Watched Illinois Central Videos and ran HO and Lionel layouts with my grandpa.



Victor

Happy Railroading.[swg][swg]

[Anonymous]

Many moons ago back in the 70's a neighbor was cleaning his attic and gave me a bunch of N scale track and a set of Pennsy passenger cars and a loco. I ran them for a couple of years in a simple oval with two switches. Now I've got a house of my own and I've moved on to HO. I'm modeling the late 60's early 70's fictional RR

[Anonymous]

i was staying with my grandma for the day, she took me toys r us and she bought me a life-like train set, and it got me hooked now i luv model railroading!!!![tup][yeah]

[Anonymous]

I recieved a HO daredevil model set for birthday back in early 80's never really played with it much gave it away then in 1990 a freind gave me his N scale starter set and the rest as they say is history as now i got lots of N scale a bit of HO and now within last two years got into large scale not Gscale but live steam also known as 1/8th scale live steam or 7.5 gauge its large enough to acutally ride on powered by any thing from 1/2 hp electric motor to 16 hp B.S 16 HP vangard engine or anything in between for example one of our club Dash 8s weighs 1000lbs and the GP 40 is around 600lbs once you come here and experience it ther is no going back watching your train go around the track and actually bein on it and running it nothing else even comes close other than prototype curious? go to
Maricopalivesteamers.com for detailed information bout us

[fsm1000]

My dad was a model railroader when I was born. Also we had a hobby shop when I was 4 and 5.
My uncle was an engineer.
Stuff like that. [:D]

And then of course there is the control, the power, the ability to create and manage and manipulate all the little people,,, HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA
ahem er um, well anyhow I like building things too.

[Anonymous]

I had always been a model builder, but didn't like not having a place for the finished piece. A friend of mine who was a model railroader but in between layouts suggested MRR, because one is constantly building and never finished. I thought "yeah, right, Lionel and tinplate - toy trains. No thank you." The day after Thanksgiving, 1986, he took me to a pure MRR LHS, slapped me upside the head with the December Model Railroader (I still have that issue and can recall the cover - "You are the Brakeman on the Quincy Local") until I saw the light. I was awakened unto the world of both modeling and prototype trains.

[bikerraypa]

When I was growing up, this guy used to park his ABA set of F7's in my backyard all the time. [:D]

I remember as a little kid out in the yard staring at the locomotives and watching them couple to their train and then heading westward along the creek. Always loved trains and always wanted to model them but never got around to it.

A number of years later, a girlfriend bought me an HO set for Christmas, and I was hooked. I've long since moved on to N scale, but I still have the other (train set, not the girlfriend. Wish I still had both).

Ray

[SSW9389]

My first train set was from the back of a cereal box when I was five. It did not last long. I graduated to my Dad's handed down Ives tinplate set and the following year got a Lionel set for Christmas in 1962. Scale modeling in HO took hold in the fall of 1969 and I am still at it today.

[dean_1230]

my brothers had gotten train sets for christmas... and then one day we were over at my cousin's and they had a box full of old train stuff that they were about to throw out. we took it instead and for the next several years, we played with it. it was mostly tyco stuff, but we supplimented what died with new stuff. and actually had pretty good luck with the Tyco warranties and repairs.

of course, it all sat in a box for 20 years while i was in college and starting a family. about 5 years ago, i had my dad send it to me. i then started supplimenting it with better stuff. starting with Athearn blue box and p2k.

and the rest, as they say, is history.

Dean

[Milwhiawatha]

The beginning I was about 3 we lived in a condo and my dad had a small layout in the basement had some good ol' Rivarossis going around and factoried nothing to eliaberate. Then we moved and trains got lost for years. the mid 90's came around we got into Dept 56 Dickes collecting ad wanted a train to go around the town. We didnt like the size of O or s scale so I purchased a Dickens village eletric train which was for the Dept 56 set. Well that started it all. Now after those years The Christmas layout got as big as it can, and the layout in the basement changed 2 times and being worked on slowly due to my business keping me busy.

[SilverSpike]

I would like to point out many of the positive influences that have assisted me in creating the current incarnation of my model railroad layout. They are listed in chronlogical order.

My grandfather who first introduced me to HO scale model railroading when I was just a little tike coming down the pike. He modeled his layout in the 1950's and early 1960's after the Rock Island railroad with pulpwood operations centered around a prototype that he and his father ran. He owned the Pioneer Timber Company in Pineville, Louisiana and provided pulpwood to local paper mills in Louisiana, Texas, and Mississippi. His father was also a dispatcher for the L&N railroad at the Eunice Depot in Louisiana for many years. I need to pick my mother's brain for more details on this railroad family history.
My parents who gave me an HO scale railroad set for Christmas one year in my pre-teen days. It was the carpet floor model, but my dad soon recognized that it needed to be lifted up and soon I assited him with my first real layout back in the 1970's. It was a 4X8 plywood express in the shed and then we added another 4X8 attached to the first with 2X2 sheets of plywood and the control panels in the middle. We had a lift up bridge and it was mostly just running trains around, with little switching. This layout was dismantled after I moved out of the house and attended college at LSU in Baton Rouge, LA.

[Anonymous]

I was raised by a railroader, so I grew up around trains, complete with helping unload sheep from a stock car and a ride in the cab of a switch engine at about 8 years old. So I guess you could say it's in the blood.

Followed the hobby off and on over the years, but you know the drill; family, job, money, etc. About all I could do was watch the trains, never had time for modeling.

Well, kids are all growed up now, not so many demands on the ol' time & money, and the new house backs up to a busy mainline, complete with siding. [:D]

As several others before me have said, "The rest is history." [swg]

[Texas Zepher]

You mean there are people out there that haven't been doing this forever?

As far as I was born with box cars for red blood cells delivering the oxygen in my blood. I've always had, at least one, electric train set...... I remember a layout mounted on the wall that folded down. I had plastic pu***rains that fit on the track, and occasionally my parents would let me get out the electric ones and run them. That was before I was in school.

I remember driving on the bridge over the rail yards (SF, D&RGW, MP, C&S) in Pueblo (1962-1964). I would cry because there were interesting trains there and my parents wouldn't stop so I could look at them.

In grade school I owned (still own) exactly one train magazine - "Practical Guide to Model Railroading". I memorized the book and wore out the cover and first few pages. I still refer to it from time to time. Then in Jr. High I discovered MR and Trains in the public library, then in a drug store that I could actually buy. In 1974 I actually got a first subscription! Only missed one year since then due to a snaffu while I was away at college.

This topic seems to surface regularly in June:
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=38780
http://www.trains.com/community/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=7143

It is a shame we can't combine them somehow.

[CSXFan]

I received a Lionel set and a 4x8 sheet of plywood for Christmas when I was 6 and then switched to my uncle's HO set when I was 12.

And it all went downhill from there... [:D]

[Renegade1c]

My dad lived two block from the Union Pacific Main Line in Cheyenne when he was a kid. His dad had given him some american flyer and he had been interested every since. I have been exposed to trains since birth and will never lose interest. I was 3 weeks old on my first train trip here in Colorado. Been interesting in trains and model railroading ever since.

[bill e]

An Illinois Central freight ran about a half mile or so behind the house where i grew up in Mississippi. My friends and I used to play on and fish underneath the trestle. When I was 11 or 12 , I got a Lionel HO starter set for Christmas. Then I started buying a whole lot of assorted track, accesories, rolling stock and stuff, but I never had the space to set it up, nail it down and leave it set up.
About six years ago during a most stupid phase I liquidated the trains and all my hockable assets for cheap. But the love of trains stuck with me.

A couple years ago I ran across some old issues of model railroader at a library sale. I was especially intrigued by the n scale layout you could build on a door in the Dec. '93 ish. Soon after I bought a starter set and kept adding to it. I think I'm hooked.

[Anonymous]

I only really got started recently. I'd always enjoyed layouts I'd seen over the years in stores, rail museums etc, then about three years I came across a layout by chance on the internet, and thought 'why don't I build one?' I only wish I'd started years ago!

My first train set, however, was a Fleischmann battery-operated one, when I was about 10 (that was back in the mid 'Sixties). My mum got fed up of buying the big, expensive batteries it used, so got my dad to fit a mains plug to the leads. Luckily I wasn't touching the rails when I turned it on, as there was a loud band and a flash, and the loco was fused to the track!

Not so sure I'm much more sensible now...

[RyanLaP]

I got started by going to a railroad museum that had alot of trains running and thats when I got started. I started with a N scale Railking set and I had a ball with it. After that I got use to playing with HO trains since N scale was to small for me and it did not give me much intrest. HO was better for me since I get to use DCC which I have used on one of my layouts and it gives me a chance to put more scenery on my layout.

[wjstix]

Well, pretty standard for my era I guess. By the time I was born (1958) our family lived along the Minneapolis Northfield and Southern Ry. so I grew up seeing real trains every day, plus our local (Mpls-St.Paul) daytime kid's show was "Lunch with Casey Jones" so I watched that every day too. I had an American Flyer "S" train set as a kid (including Atlas S-Snap Track), actually had a very early "N" trainset in the later sixties.

On Saturdays, there was a local 15 min. TV show sponsored by the Woodcraft Hobby Shop on Lake St. in south Minneapolis. My dad was a mail carrier out of the Lake St. Station, and starting around 1969 became their mailman. Thru them, he got a Tyco HO train set and an MRC Golden Throttlepack for me for Xmas 1971. That and the Dec 1971 copy of MR got me started on 'serious' model railroading.

[Anonymous]

My earliest recollection of trains was when my Grandma used to haul me back and forth from Idaho to Texas during big brawl no 2 - when I was about 8 my stepfather stopped in Fort Dodge Iowa - he had an Uncle who was with the Northwestern - he must have been a hostler - and we went out to the roundhouse and I got to ride in the cab of something while the unit went around on the turntable prior to being put into the roundhouse - I never forgot that experience.

My brother and I shared a Lionel set as a Christmas present in 1950 but my pappy wasn't really into things like hobbies so I soon tired of it and it fell into disuse - that trainset is now in the attic of my brother's garage in Michigan. I had developed a moderate interest in ship modeling. I kindled an interest in railroad history before I ever got interested in railroad modelling.

My interest in (model) trains dates from the summer of 1962. The Air Force had sent me to Vandenburg in California for some special computer training and wound up extending me there for two weeks to be an observer at a missile shoot - they also left me broke (do you know how many places there are to party in the Golden State???) I had enough money for two cartons of cigarettes ($1.76 a carton) and a little left over so I went to the exchange to replenish my reading material - Playboy was my preference and Vandenburg was one of the few military installations that carried it on their newstand but they had the old issue so I browsed the magazine rack for something else to tickle my interest -------- and the July, '62 MR and Craftsman caught my eye. I bought them and for the next two weeks I read and reread them. I was hopelessly hooked!!! And I've stayed hooked!!!

[Anonymous]

Back in 1996 when I first moved back to wichita, I spent a while living with my grandparents since our house wasn't completly ready yet. My grandpa would take me to the train museum and train store every saturday, and I would see those big shiny Santa Fe GE's smoking, and I fell in love. I first ran my grandpa;s lionel PA1 with that magnet traction thing, and then I started collecting HO scale. Christmas of 1996 came, and there it was under the tree for me, an athearn box! I opened it to find a BN F45 with all the parts (which of course I lost but still have the engine) In christmas of 1997, I gto a life-like set, that I ran the guts out of and ended up burning the little things that make it tick. In january 1997, BNSF heritage 1 paint was starting to show up (oh dear [:(]) and I went to the train store with my dad and bought a really nice athearn engine (SP F7A) In summer 1998, I got my 4x8 board that I still own. I used life-like power-lock track on it up until 2000, and then we finally laid the roadbed and track. Then came christmas, and it had to go into storage for 6 months.I was so depressed! Then, over that period of time I got athearn kits, and plastic buildings, and ran the guts out of that SP engine. It was on consignment for 3$, so not much loss there. It was made when atheran had the box before the ATSF one, so it must have been older. I got an engine replacement, and a new shell for it. I bought some passenger cars too. Now my layout is nearing its 8 year mark, and still going strong pulling little unpainted plastic men and women [:D] Looks like I did my homework for today..

[zeis96]

Don't mind me, I was working on my benchwork and then the kid went down for a nap so I'd thought I'd dig up this old thread and post something. I remember always asking for a trainset for Christmas but never did get one.   I also remember when I was really young I was at an Aunt's house and going up this metal spiral staircase led to a room with a train set. I remember nothing more about it other than it wasn't hooked up and how bad I wanted to play with it. Well 2 years ago we bought a house with a basement and I may now finally get that trainset I've always wanted!

[TheK4Kid]

My Dad always setup his Lionel trains around the Christmas tree each Christmas from when I was about 4 years old, but the following Xmas season, my Grandfather who worked for Sear and Roebuck (remember when it was called Sears and Roebuck ?).
Anyway Grandpa ran the hardware and roofing dept in the Fort wayne Indiana store, and took me to work with him one Saturday(December 1956) since I was staying with Grandpa and Grandma that weekend.
There was HUGE  Lionel layout setup in the main display windows, and Grandpa took over to see it, and let me stay with the guy who was running the trains. I remember that there were about 3 or 4 ttrains all running at once!!! I was on cloud nine! One orr two were steam engines and they had smoke coming out of the smokestacks!There were all kinds of Lionel accessories and building setup with these trains. I was there until lunch time until Grandpa and I went home  for lunch, and I stayed with Grandma while Granpa went back to work. My Grandpa passed away the following April.

 

When I was 10 years old (1961), my folks got me an HO trainset through Sears, and I still have it.It was a NYC diesel, and Dad later bought me a small Lionel steamer swtcher engine.My Grandma later added to it for one of my birhdays, and bought me some track, and a couple of HO rolling stock, one was the rocket launcher caar, and a gondola car with some crates that set inside of it.It was red in color, and the crates were a light tan in color.I've been hooked evwer since and got serious about building a layout last fall.I've been collecting HO rolling stock, kits, etc, for the last ten years, with an eventual layout in mind.
My dad also worked as a brakeman on the Pennsy out of Ft wayne Indiana and I remeber going down to the "Baker Street Station when I was maybe 5 to 6 years old, and we'd wait for Dad's train to come in, and watch off in the distance for the big plume of smoke from the steam engine, and listen for the steam whistle, then it would roll into the station!
6 years ago, my dad passed away, and I now have his Lionel trains.They are vintage about 1935.A Commodore Vanderbilt steam loco and and another 2-4-2 steam engine.A set of freight cars and a set of passenger cars.They all still work.

 

TheK4Kid 

Working on the "Pennsy" 

in HO 

 

 

[gmcrail]

Old thread or not, it's worth sharing... 

 Me?  1945, Christmas - age 3 1/2.  We're visiting my grandparent's house in Jackson Tenn, and on Christmas morning, I found, spread out all over the dining room, a huge set of pre-war Marklin #1 gauge electric trains.  Freight, passenger, steam, diesel, all German prototype, with lights, and everything..  Buildings, switches, accessories galore.  All salvaged from the ruins of WWII Germany by my father.  I didn't eat anything all day.  By mid-morning I could run everything myself.  Hardly looked at any other presents.  The "bug" bit hard and deep, and hasn't let go since.   Incidentally, I still have those trains, and they still run.

[Dave Vollmer]

My father has been a model railroader since the '50s.  I used to watch him scratchbuild structures, often based on photographs an measurements he took in the field, mostly in Pennsylvania, but some in New England.

I gotmy first HO trainset at age 7 or 8 (I forgot which ) for my birthday.  It was a Bachmann freight set with a Sante Fe warbonnet F, a yellow Chessie boxcar, a blue Rock Island hopper, perhaps another car (?), and a Sante Fe wide-vision caboose. 

My father built me a layout based on Bob Hayden's Yule Central (it's a 4x6 in one of Kalmbach's project books).  I ended up learning my own scenery and structure building on that layout.

The rest is history!

[luvadj]

My grandfather got me started with an HO set when I was 4. I still have the picture in my toolbox. From there I went to post-war Lionel 027 (sure wish I had that stuff now). These days, I'm into both, HO & N-scale, but I mostly spend my time with my N stuff.