A hand-me-down American Flyer S-gauge train set from my much older cousins...
Tom
https://tstage9.wixsite.com/nyc-modeling
Time...It marches on...without ever turning around to see if anyone is even keeping in step.
yougottawanta wrote:What got you started? And which scale do you model N, HO, O, G On30 ?
My dad bought me a train for Christmas when I was 3. I don't have much memory of him trying to take the controls from me, though I do remember him building a plywood prarie for the track.
He likes to tell people we moved to Texas to buy a house so I had someplace to set up my train.
Now I have a building here in Virginia behind my house for the trains. My wife tells people we bought the house for the trains, which is not really far from the truth !
I had told my wife that when our first child was born I was buying a train to go under the Christmas tree. She jumped the gun and bought me a train the Christmas she was pregnant. The next day I discovered a copy of Model Railroader, November 1971 (overseas PX was a little slow in magazines). And so it went from there.
Enjoy
Paul
Humm.... Pyscologically speaking, It could be that, when I was in second grade, the boys down the block had a neat Lionel layout set up on a board in their bedroom. I asked for and got a train (HO) for Christmas and my Dad said he would make a layout and put it up on a board etc. That never happened and probally planted the seed in my subconscious that said "I need a layout on a board.
Of course, it could be I just like trains and enjoy building models and such.....and have a morbid fear of ever having extra money laying around not spent!!!
Tilden
My first trainset was an O scale Lionel that my dad gave me when I was 4. My curiousity got the best of me though when he woke up one morning and saw I had taken the engine apart to see what made it work.
My first real step into the hobby came in the form of an AHM train set with a a figure-8 track arrangement. We mounted that on a sheet of plywood and I was hooked ever since. I soon found out my great-grandfather on my dad's side had modeled the New Haven in HO and all his leftovers were stored in my grandmothers attic so I eagerly rummaged through the boxes and tripled the size of my collection. I still have most of his stuff which is in running condition. Some of the cars have very interesting couplers... well before the standardized X2F horn hooks, never mind Kadee's.
Modeling the fictional B&M Dowe, NH branch in the early 50's.
Gandy Dancer wrote: yougottawanta wrote:What got you started? And which scale do you model N, HO, O, G On30 ? Nothing got me started. All I can figure it was in my blood from birth. I started with HO. I tried O, S, and even switched 100% to N, but always end up going back to HO. I also have Fn3 (G-gage track uses as 3' gauge).
Santa Claus brought me Marx electric trains for Christmas when I was three years old and Lionel starting when I was five. By then, I noticed what was just out the back door...
My dad had a pretty substantial O27 layout that he'd started when my brother and I were toddlers. I added to it when I was a teenager. In his later years, he sold it (no, don't sob, it was OK)--last year started back in the hobby (nostalgia for the Frisco in Missouri where I grew up, toys, stuff to do with hands--crafting, etc.) in HO (more realism, more availability in my road name, etc.).
Jim
An American Flyer Royal Blue set for Christmas.
Gandy Dancer wrote: yougottawanta wrote:What got you started? And which scale do you model N, HO, O, G On30 ? Nothing got me started. All I can figure it was in my blood from birth.
LOL
I can related to that. I have "always" (or at least for as long as I can remember) loved trains. Small wonder - I was born into a family that had worked on and with trains for a long time by the time I was born. My great grandfather started on the RR back in 1885, and there has been family members on the RR ever since, ie for the last 122 years. My dad was born in the upstairs apartment of a small rural Norwegian railroad station, where his dad was stationmaster.
Great grandpa was on the railroad, great grandpa's brother was on the railroad, grandpa was on the railroad, several of grandpa's brothers-in-laws, three of my uncles (my dad's brothers). Later a couple of cousins and my brother, plus my brother's wife and my brother's father-in-law.
I started riding commuter trains daily myself 26 years ago, at age 16, when I started senior high school in a neighbouring town. I used the long distance trains when I went into the army for my army service, and kept using them when I went to university in another part of the county. Came back to commuter trains when I started working after the U.
So I have always been interested in trains. Railroad modelling was a more gradual process - got my first start at age 7 or so, a long time ago, when my dad and I built a layout in our basement of the Norwegian army base house we lived in when I was a kid, a second start 5-6 years ago when my oldest kid became interested in trains, and a third start about 2 years ago, when my youngest son turned into a total train nut and I also had been reading model railroader magazine for 3 or 4 years and decided that I wanted to build a realistic looking 1960s american diesel train layout set in the Twin Cities that could be operated in a prototype-similar way for myself.
What scale ? H0.
Grin, Stein
Lionels, as far back as I can remember. My Dad bought them for me, of course, but they were never his, always mine. I had to laugh about taking the engine apart to see how it worked. I suppose I did that, and put them back together again, when I was young. My Mom used to tell the stories about me taking apart the door locks to see how they worked.
I built my layout up to 2 4x8's in an L, and then made the transition to HO. I wanted the "realism" factor, but it was a big mistake to sell the Lionels to finance the HO's. Those trains would have been worth a small fortune today.
After high school, I was ordered to take down the trains, because I wasn't living at home anymore and realistically I wasn't running them any more, either. I packed them up, and carted them from attic to basement for 40 years. Finally, my wife suggested I pull them out to get me away from the computer.
She didn't know she'd created a monster....
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
what got me started in trains?...
it would have to be a Presidents Choice (IHC?) 50th anniversary train set with 4 cars, a caboose, and a camelback locomotive lettered for the CPR. i forget when i got it but i remember practically destroying it because i was young (and i had a hard time understanding because i was so using to pushing it along), so it went to the grandparents house for many years (5ish) before it was brought back due to them moving to a different house. i never realised it until i was cleaning my room, when it shifted on the top shelf. the box is gone, couplers missing, yet surprisingly the engine was in great condition except for missing a few handrails. i still have the original equipment along with a whole lot more. Today, my layout resides on a foldaway board attached to the wall by hinges. my rolling stock has hit around 20 cars and my best locomotive is a P2K S3 switcher.
i think i just said my railroading history...
My father bought us (three boys) Lionel trains when I was about 6. When we moved, a couple of years later, he built an HO layout. After college, I built a couple of apartment layouts. Currently, reorganizing the garage to build a second layout with my son, he's 8. The tradition may continue.
Bill
I got started in 1963 at age four when I got two Mantua/Tyco HO sets for Christmas--The Blue Ribbon, with a UP GP20, M&StL boxcar with an animated brakeman walking on the roof, a C&O gondola with pipe load, Hooker tank car, and a caboose; and a PRR "F-9" with three passenger cars. For those of you who only know Tyco from the 1970's and think it is junk, the early sixties version was of higher quality--all of the cars had metal underframes and trucks, and Dad was steered away from Athearn at the Hobby Shop he bought the sets at because they used rubber bands for the drive whereas Mantua/Tyco had a geared drive. The engines and cars lasted for years.
I begged my parents every Christmas to let me leave the trains up all year, and finally when I was 14, they agreed to let me have a 5 x 4 foot layout in a corner of the basement. I think they thought I'd get tired of the trains and that would be the end of it. Wrongo. I only grew more interested, was able to expand to a 4 x 6 layout the next year, and haven't looked back.
Mr B&O
Our first train set was a Marklin (my father was station in Europe. Then a couple of Lionel for my brother and I. It wasn't until my son was born (25 years ago), that I got back into it in HO. I'm now working on my 2nd layout as an adult. This time it's for sheer relaxation and enjoyment.
Marlon
See pictures of the Clinton-Golden Valley RR
Well, for me it all started when I was around 5 years old in the mid 90's and I saw my first train. Big, loud, and powerful. That's what got me hooked. I asked for a train set for my next birthday and sure enough, there was a cheap Life-Like HO scale set wrapped in sports car wrapping paper and a newly built 4' x 8' table in my basement at my next birthday. Been hooked on MRRing and Railfanning ever since.
-Brandon
Hi guys
Dad made a terrible mistake when I was 4yo he bought my first train set a triang pick up goods set.
My father two of my uncle's and now me are railway men so I guess its in the blood
I have had "OO" scale "N" scale and "G" scale layouts currently "G" in the garden and as soon as I can get a plan for Kings Cross station I will start on the winter layout in "OO" scale.
Since I have the Flying Scotsman and the Hogwarts Express in "OO" scale this seems a logical terminal to find out about even if its only represented by platform 9, 9&3/4 and platform 10
regards John
billwinkes wrote: My father bought us (three boys) Lionel trains when I was about 6. When we moved, a couple of years later, he built an HO layout. After college, I built a couple of apartment layouts. Currently, reorganizing the garage to build a second layout with my son, he's 8. The tradition may continue. Bill