First Model Railroad

My first pathetic attempts at Model Railroading (1992 – 2000):

My first layout circa 1992

Here it is, the first of my many model railroads. As you can see from the photo, it ain’t much. The track plan consisted of an outer oval with an inside passing siding plunked down on a 4’x6’ plywood covered with Lifelike “grass mat.” My buildings consisted of a Lifelike Styrofoam “mountain” and some four-wall shacks made out of Legos.

In all fairness the story really started a year or so earlier when my family and I were in a toy store and on a whim, my father bought a Bachman HO for my brother and me. After numerous unsuccessful attempts to run the thing on the floor, we came to the realization that this train was too delicate for that sort of operation. So while my brother showed little interest I begged my parents for at least a year or so until they brought in the afore-mentioned sheet of plywood and set it atop our Fisher Price “Tournament Table.”

The early 1990s were a great time to be in the hobby. Most toy stores still had model trains and they were inexpensive. I remember saving my allowance and then going to the closest KB Toys and buying a new freight car for $3. I tell you those were the days! I didn’t need to build dramatic scenery; I had a child’s vivid imagination to supply that stuff. While an adult would see a train running in circles while a child can sit at the controls and think they’re taking the train for a journey.

At any rate this arrangement lasted for a little while, until my brother started pitching a fit about not being able to use the Tournament Table buried beneath the layout. So my parents stored the layout in the attic. Damn my brother, his friends and their pool/ping pong/glide hockey playing ways.

Seven or eight months passed and Easter of 1993 rolled around. Well there in my Easter Basket was a Bachman 40-foot boxcar. Suddenly the glowing embers began to smolder and then burst into flame. I asked my mother if we could retrive the HO layout from the attic. Her reply of course was “no.” This of course led to the following exchange:

Me:  “Please?”

Mom: “No.”

Me: “Please?”

Mom: “No.

Me: “Please, please pleeeaaaase?”

Mom: “I said no!”

Me: “Pleeeeeeeeeeaaaaaaaaaaaaaase?”

My Dad: “Ah will you let the kid run his train?”

Mom: “Alright!”

Me: “Thanks mom!”

            So while guests arrived for Easter dinner, I was busy reviving the layout from its slumber.  Fortunately my friend Matt shared my enthusiasm for trains and was always eager to lend a hand.

            After a while, the layout’s operational quirks began to make themselves known and my father and I decided to build a better layout.

My Second Model Railroad 1993-94:

Sadly the only photo of the layout is this screen grab from some old VHS-C tapes of it in action. This layout basically consisted of three concentric ovals. The above photos were taken very early on and most of the buildings are O Scale. That changed when my father took me to a Greenburg train show and I was able to by a whole bunch of Realistic HO buildings. We made roads out of Black poster board and automotive pin stripe tape. My father had the brilliant (and I mean that literally) idea to use clear Christmas lights to illuminate the buildings. My friend Matt supplied a few Atlas buildings as well. I tried my hand at making some buildings (tin can oil storage tanks and such). I also had some cool operating accessories. There was an oil storage tank with a diesel horn, a warehouse with a steam whistle and a coal dumper. Now this was model railroading! 

Before long I amassed a large fleet of HO equipment. I had tons of freight cars, passenger cars and engines. And then I took it all down and changed scales.

A number of things happened to bring this about. First my friend Matt got a Lego Monorail and I of course had to have one too. Plus the two of us had taken an interest in my dad’s old Lionel trains and set them up on the floor every chance we got. My father decided to get back into the hobby himself and joined the O-Gauge club Central Operating Lines. COL was (and still is) constructing a huge layout in an industrial park. Well damn, here I am with a jalopy and my father goes and gets a brand new Cadillac.

At any rate I must have put out the right signals because for Christmas of 1994 my parents came through with the Monorail as well as a K-Kline O Gauge starter set. So I tossed all that HO stuff into a Rubbermaid bin (before selling it all for $35 in 1996) and built an O-Gauge/Lego city in its place. Unfortunately I don’t have any pictures, but it was a fun little layout.

In 1995, I was fully bitten by the Lego bug and my father built me a new 4’ x 7’ table to put my Lego city on. In 1996 we built a second smaller table underneath for the legos and built my fourth layout in O-Guage. Even though I had Lego trains I really don’t consider it to be a model railroad.

Fourth Layout 1996 – 2000:

Three ovals and two levels, plus a trolley; this layout could run more trains than any other. However in order to get all the trains, lights and accessories working, I had to pull some wiring tomfoolery, which earned this layout the nickname Glass Tower. No nothing ever burned. This was however my first attempt at building scenery and well it’s pretty mediocre at best. 

My childhood home was quite small with no basement. A 4x8 was only layout we would ever be able to fit. By 2000, I realized I was running my O-Gauge stuff at the club and this layout had become a dust collector. With that in mind, I dismantled it to focus on my Garden railway.