I remember back in 87' I got an N scale Atlas U.P. train set from my aunt and uncle, it had an SD9 and some freight cars, I was seventeen yrs. old. I didn't have much money so I could not build a big or fancy layout. I found and old wood panel that someone put out to the curb and I came back with my dad's pick up truck and took it home. I built an oval layout in my dad's tool room cause he didn't seem to mind, the panel was about a 5x9 as far as I can remember. I didn't have much experience so the oval was the only plan I could put to use. I needed something simple so I could run. I purchased some books but I could not understand how they could run trains on such complicated tracks. So the last year of high school I decided to take an electronics class, and suddenly things looked a lot more clearer then before. But as I stated to plan my next layout I had to put it on hold for college. For a long time I struggled to find a major I liked so finally after four years of on and off college I decided to get a photography major. After I finished college came home to find my model railroading stuff was given away by my grandmother, lucky me I put a few locos and rolling stock away but at this time model railroading was on hold. I got married to my first wife, this was a disaster so I divorced her after just one yr. of marriage. I met my second wife whom I'm still married to, thank god that this worked out and she has the patience to put up with me We purchased a home and we had an attic and I started thinking, I still had some of my locos and rolling stock, so I talked it over with my wife and she said we had a small space in the attic I could use so I started to contemplate track plans. I decided since I had a small space to work with to go with a 4x8 layout. The plan was to have as much track as possible in as little of space as possible. So I looked and I searched till I found my ideal layout. And today its still not finished as we are toying with the idea of purchasing a larger home since our family is expanding. I talked it over with my wife and this new home will have a larger room so I can expand my layout.
I had been model railroading since I could crawl. Starting with a used set of Lionel O-27. Later adding Lionel O and American Flyer S, plus some Marx "o-27" and even a bit of HO time. My first Christmas after getting married, my wife gave me one of the Bachmann N scale plastic boxed sets. That was thirty eight years ago.... with NTrak, oNeTrack and Bendtrack in between... Since then I've spent more time with Lionel, (TCA, TTOS), HO, also HOn30 and On30. The On30 and N scale are with me today. Will be working on another T-Trak module this afternoon. Boxcab E50
I didn't..It choose me-in a way. Way back in '68 I made my usual Saturday morning trip to Halls Hardware-the shop was in the basement-and I notice a Atlas N Scale train set with a E8 and several Atlas car kits-remember those?- and I carefully looked at it-recall I was a HO scaler and member of the Columbus Model Railroad club and like every Saturday you could find several members there and N Scale was a novelty and a joke and anybody buying that small junk was to be pitied and to a degree scorned. I left the shop empty handed but,couldn't get that fool train set off my mind...I returned to the shop later that evening and bought the set and several extra cars.. Now you know how I got started but,it wasn't until '79 before I became "serious" about N Scale and traded my HO for N. As a side not I did buy extra track,switches and few more cars and had a small layout..I also had to go to various shops about a hour before closing and buy N Scale as I didn't want to lose my image as a die hard HO modeler and you know how important images are when you're young.
Simplified- Thirty two years ago, small layout for my daughter who was five at the time. She lost interest, I didn't. I started to add track and messed up the wiring. Everything went away until her daughter was four and expressed an interest. I decided to do the Atlas N-18 track plan and succeeded. I am now expanding around the basement. Grandchild did not lose interest and she is 10. Right now, she is scratchbuilding a container from balsa to sit on a flat car. She is insisting that it be painted bright purple. Being aware that it is her project and proud of it, I will have a bright purple container on a flat car carrying freight on the Lessons Learned Line. We spend quality time working on projects in the basement and she has a concurrent project now of a Tichy water tower, completely desprued, sanded perfectly, painted as well as I could and ready to be glued, all without tight supervision by me (She chose the colors after looking at other water towers on the layout, thank God. She does our WS rock mold formations and basic washes thereon. I am showing her techniques for final shadings thereon. Now, if she could handle a resistance soldering unit .........
About 1968, I saw some N stuff in hobby shops and bought a little as an experiment... an Atlas Santa Fe heavyweight Pullman that cost $2.50 and a $1.50 boxcar or two. Next year, I thought of building a structure as a feasibility project... would it be possible actually to model in N scale. Confined to a hospital for three days of diabetes tests, I built this model on my bed tray, with balsa wood, an exacto knife and airplane glue, from a sketch I drew of condemned housing being demolished for a slum clearance project. I decided N scale was possible and it fit my apartment size. I built a 2 x 4 foot layout that was supposed to be a Colorado scene for a friend's kid and transported it on the roof of my compact car 200 miles for Christmas. In 1971, I won a TV story writing contest and got a trip to West Berlin, Germany and built a small (27 by 34 inch) Berlin scene layout, while planning an N scale Santa Fe layout as my main interest...
Life time ho converted to n Hi Guys, My story is much like all of yours. started into trains at 4-5 years old one Christmas with a Ho set. Every Christmas there after everyone kept buying more things and my original layout kept growing. Fast forward to 1999, my wife and I bought our house and it had a very nice sized basement. I built a 4 track Ho main around the walls of my basement as a shelf layout. I worked on it for awhile doing scenery and such but a layout this size was much like a club layout(my room was 15' X 20') and was very overwhelming to the point that it became like a second job if I wanted to ever start to see any kind of progress. 2004 my first child comes along and all the while I had been buying and selling Ho as I found collections to purchase. One collection of Ho came with a small n scale set. I didn't think much of n scale till recently when my 2 kids took over my train/rec room as a toy room and Dad(me) got moved to a small area of the laundry room side of the basement. The Ho collection was sold completely and up when my small n scale layout. It is 3' x 4' modeled in the 40's-50's era eventhough I do have some newer motive power also. The small layout is great and I couldn't be happier! As warped as this sounds I am an advocate that smaller is better when it comes to layouts. I am no longer overwhelmed by the massive size that once was my Ho layout and I can actually see accomplishments as I finish projects on my layout now. I couldn't be happier than I am in n scale! I will never look back to the larger scales again! That's my story and I'm sticking to it....... Wayne PS: N Builder where abouts in Ohio do you live? I'm looking for locals to model railroad with around the town I live in.
Marx set with a crane and boom tender, Christmas 1961. But the seed was sown by the model railroad club in Lancaster, Ca., that had a layout at the Antelope Valley fair grounds, a favorite spot for me to watch trains run around their huge layout when the fair was taking place.
At 63, ever since I can remember, trains played an important part of my life and surroundings. I had a "father-built" Lionel layout in 1952, completely decked out, and would spend literally hours every day. Then over the years, HO, then hiatus, then HO again in early eighties. Then one day, a co-worker saw my Athearn diesel on my desk set at work, and invited me after work to see his N scale layout. I had never seen N before and I was literally blown away. I immediately changed scales, and the co-worker became my mentor and lifelong friend. We built my first "big time" N layout in 86, and since I was working and making money, I started to accumulate a lot of trains, structures, etc from the many sources in soFla back then - hobby shops, auctions, swap meets, train shows and so on. Soon, I had a lot of trains, and now reading Model Railroader incessantly, then N scale mag, then NSR mag, and viola here I is!!!!! I am currently building my umpteenth layout, have over 600 steam and diesel locos, 1300 pieces of rolling stock/pass cars, lots of projects underway, quite a few structures for the layouts, and so on. My level of enthusiasm has not waned at all over the years. N is that alluring to me. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
I grew up with two older brothers and my Dad building monster Marx 027 layouts all over the house at Christmas time. It took over. There was a switching yard under the dining room table, a loop around our "farms" spread out across the living room. And every thing was connected by lines running down the front hallway and through the kitchen. I remember a siding into the pantry. My Mom about went crazy. It all got put away after New Years and we had to wait till Christmas again to play trains. In 1964 my brother gave me a small 000 Lone Star layout on a board that I could drag out any time I wanted. By 1967 I started on a new larger layout using Arnold Rapido and Atlas N scale. Been at it ever since.
This may be one of the most epic yet ridiculous stories you've ever heard, but it's 100% true! Started out with thomas the tank engine and lgb european sets from my grandparents as a kid. Took a train ride in Campo along the SD&AE (which I currently model) and saw huell howser's carriso gorge excursion on a vhs tape. got an HO john bull trainset a couple years later. Then a up trainset in HO. Then got an at&sf big hauler set from my 4th grade teacher, got more g scale stuff, and started building a layout in my backyard. but I enraged my father bu uprooting his cilantro plant for room for a mine spur and he made me pull up the rails! dazed and confused, I bought an On30 kitbashed C&S #22, took it home and planned on using it for C&S stuff in O. Went to home depot and bought stuff for a 2x4 foot On30 diorama to get my feet wet, and en route to the hobby shop I ask my mom, "Can we go back and get stuff for a 4x8 layout?" And She said, "No. Use what you got." ...I nearly died. So... in which scale can you model a layout on a 2x4 foot board? N SCALE!! So I bought $500 ( of money I saved for three years) worth of n scale layout stuff and a kato tiger stripe sp nw-2 plus some atlas sp boxcars, drew up plans for an SD&AE campo layout (I still loved that road and town) and drew a track plan on a restaurant napkin in the hobby shop and went from there, but my mom recommended using flexible trackbed when I wanted cork roadbed. She won out and her decision led to the shifting and self-destruction of my layout a year later. Now with no layout, I was truly desperate and tried modeling TTn3.5 pacific coast railway models (don't ask, there must've been something in my iced tea that day) and soon gave up. I went back to n scale and started my Jacumba SD&AE layout last year, and here I am, kitbashing SD&AE steamers and scratchbuilding accurate depots, right down to the completely scratchbuilt train order boards!
My mom (the creative one in the family) created an N-Scale layout on a framed 2' x 3' sheet of plywood. The modest layout consisted of a circle of track and a short passing siding. On it she painted roads, glued-down grass, structures, and trees to make a believable scene, and then presented it to me on Christmas morning in 1967. The roster consisted of an AT&SF Atlas 0-4-0 steamer, a boxcar, a gondola, a tank car, and an AT&SF caboose. We lived in a very tiny house near Los Angeles, CA, and that little layout seemed to fill the entire room! The (small) layout's long gone, but not the memories. I've been hooked ever since.
I've told this story many times before but I enjoy telling it. Long story short, I got disillusioned with HO scale not long after starting my last HO layout (4x12') in 1988. I'm a modern-era modeler and didn't learn until it was too late that 18" radius curves were no good for the long autoracks, TOFC flats and passenger cars I wanted to run. Since the mid-90s my layout pretty much gathered dust. A little voice inside my head told me to convert to N scale, but at the time, it was still too expensive and the selection was very slim. In 2006, I got laid off from my job and got real depressed, and a bad experience around that time gave me a very bleak outlook on life. A couple months later, I stared at my layout and considered dismantling it. I briefly researched the selection of N scale at the time and was satisfied with the offerings. So I decided to reduce the size of the 4x12' HO layout, dismantle it, sell off my HO trains and build a 4x8' N scale layout. That idea of planning something and building it gave me a new outlook on life. I was more empowered, more confident, more optimistic. My track plan roughly resembled the HO plan and also retained the 18" radius curves - but this time it wasn't a liability. I gradually sold off my HO collection at local swap meets and used the money I made to buy N scale trains. In November 2006, I was officially an N-scaler, and I never looked back
I had trains as kid, after college, getting married and other priorities in my life. The trains took a back seat. At 55 I started over again new wife, new house, etc. Then I met a guy at work who had a N Scale layout, got to talking and next thing you know I was back into MRR. I went with N Scale do to space restrictions.
I noticed that N scale is more popular due to its size. I had a friend that modeled in HO and had a 4x10 layout, I like it but it just seemed that the locos and rolling stock where too big for the layouts size, he could only run about six freight cars at one time. Then at one time I went to the hobby shop with him I saw they had this smaller size scale compared to HO and I was very interested in this scale. I started to think how cool is this that someone can build a smaller layout but they only had a few N scale locos and rolling stock at this time, they didn't have a whole lot to choose from, this was back in 86'. My friend always said that N scale will never catch on. I wish I would still be in touch with him to show how popular N became.
My wife and I just moved into a rental house in San Antonio around 1998 and I was looking for something else to do (working, lawn care, and bicycling weren't enough). I thought I would go out and get a couple of plastic model car kits. I stopped by a local store called "Tex'N Hobbies" (guess what the N stood for). I skipped the kits and looked at the display cases of trains for some time. I stopped in quite a few times before I made my first (and not last) purchase. The rest, as they say, is history. Never did get that plastic model car kit. I guess it would have been cheaper...
Well I am fortunate to be the son of a family of NKP railroaders - Grandfather a conductor, Dad- chief clerk to trainmaster, mother - stenographer and grew up in a railroad city Lima Ohio with 5 railroads - Pennsy, Erie, B&O, NKP, DT&I and the Lima Locomotive Works. So my sister, who is 5 years older, and I got Lionel for our first Christmas - 1940 and 1945. I had O 27, moved to HO at my Dad's suggestion about 10. Big hiatus until mid 30's for my daughter with HO. Then in mid 40's tried some N, liked it but life and career led to another hiatus. Began again about 7 years ago and refined my plan in a different house with a bi-level around the walls layout that I say will be lifetime project representing the NKP from Lima to Bellevue(80 miles) with 9.5 scale miles. Since I live in the San Juan Mountains of Colorado there are long breaks, so progress is slow. All of our friends enjoy seeing the layout. It says to me that folks our age still remember railroads and model trains.
I came to N scale relatively recently. My interest in model railroading in general developed as a kid, as a result of the room size Lionel O-27 layout that my uncle built in the 50s. In my teens during the early/mid 70s, I began collecting my own Lionel track in anticipation of someday building a layout of my own...the garage where I had a stove box full of track stored was bulldozed with the track in it, while I was away at college (long story). In the mid 80s my boss at work was into HO scale model railroading...he rekindled the bug. From the mid 80s through 2005, I went through more than I want to count false starts on building HO layouts...each interrupted by life....moves, job changes, marriage, and health issues. By 2006, I'd convinced myself that having a layout was not meant to be. With my health, there was not accessible space for an HO layout in the very small home we're in...all my HO stuff was packed in storage tubs and sent to the basement. After Christmas 2006, I was playing around on ebay, and noticed some saved searches for train stuff I'd been looking for in the past. I don't know if it was boredom or what, but I triggered one. In the results was an auction for a set of Kato Santa Fe Super Chief passenger cars. I said out loud something along the lines of "Wow! Those look sharp". My wife heard and asked "What?" I explained what they were, and her reply was something along the lines of "If you want them, get them.". I explained that it was pointless, because I had given up on having a layout, and that they were N scale and I have HO stuff. She asked what N scale was, and I told her about half the size of HO. "Well, then you would have room". I said it would be expensive starting over. "We'll manage....get them.". Since then, I started out building a HCD door layout to be setup on the dining room table, only to abandon that when we planned on moving. Last year, when the planned move fell through and we decided to build on here, part of the project was to build a combination train and storage building. Last winter, days after building the first half of the bench work in the building, I had a serious health setback, leaving me unable to even get to the train building. After a period of "Woe is me, I'll never have a layout", I got back on track in a small way...I'm just getting started on a small cut down HCD layout for my bedroom.
christmas 1968 or 1969, cant remember which. my mom picked up an aroura postage stamp trains set at some department store instead of the usual HO. she thought they were cute. been with n every since...
