My first N scale set in 1978 was an Atlas "Shifty Sam" set which came with pretty much the same components as the Lifelike "Little Joe". Still have the components of the set. Russ
My first real piece of n-scale equipment was a Atlas GP40-2 in YN2 CSX that my wife got me for X-Mas back in 96 or 97 when they first came out. I been hook ever since.
It was 1970....the ubiquitous 0-6-0 Tank Loco ATSF #147, Texaco 3-dome tank, Monon gondola, National Dairy Despatch Reefer, and a UP Yellow caboose. Little blue Atlas transformer. Ran the dickens out of that poor 0-6-0. My Dad tacked an oval of sectional and flex to a 4x8x3/4 particle board and set it up on folding legs. We learned about the lack of structural integrity of particle board when it drooped in the middle. Mom, Dad, and brothers followed up with the Atlas GP40 #1347, many other cars, switches, buildings. The book "Nine N-Scale Layouts", with its wonderful photos and clever writing, hooked me once and for all. Alas, Mom, Dad, and #147 are long gone, but I have everything else, including this wonderful hobby (and soon a basement too!).
SW9 ATSF 2426 in Dec of 2001. I still love that little engine, but would like to DCC it. I will, if its easy enough.
Aurora "Postage Stamp" train set. Would have been Christmas 1997? I would have been in the 7th grade.
My first N scale was in 1977 for my 12th birthday. I got a Life Like train set with a CB&Q SD45. I have been in N scale ever since with a few year break about 5 years ago.
My first N purchase was an FM diesel switcher (can't recall the model but it wasn't an SW type). My first structure kit was a country grain elevator (the layout I'm building is a Midwest shortline serving various, mostly agricultural businesses.
It had to be I am guessing it had to be in the mid 1990's, a pair of Kato SD45's in Santa Fe. One was traded away, and the other now has been patched to BNSF.
A friend of mine had this cool Minitrix set when I was a kid, while I had my Tyco HO set up on a 4X8 sheet of plywood in the basement. I decided N was cooler cuz I could put a layout in my room (which ended up being 4X3). This was the first loco I bought in N scale: I was in the midst of trying to upgrade the unit when I went off to college in the late 70s (my plan was to fabricate handrails from brass wire (there were no hand-rail kits in those days) and fill the pilots. I also had picked up a Minitrix U28C as a donor for a better chassis, but it all went into a state of "suspended animation" when I headed off to college. I never worked on it again though and when I returned from my modeling hiatus there was much better stuff out there so it sat until the Kato SD45s came out, which nailed shut the idea of me ever messing with this loco again. Mark
First train ever was an Athearn GP35 in Chessie System obviously HO when I was 5 and the first N scale peice was a Life Like FA-2 when I was 13. Still have both of them and hope to pass them down one day.
IIRC my first N scale item was a Rapido 0-6-0T that I bought in a downtown Chicago train shop. This was 1967 or '68. My first layout was a 2' X 4' plywood table that I mounted on casters and wheeled under the bed in our small apartment.
A ConCor GN lightweight, smooth-sided coach. I'd been out of trains (HO) for 3 years of high school and 4 years of college. I was due to report to Uncle Sam in one week. Under the circumstances, buying an N-scale car seemed like the stupidest thing in the world to do. But, as it turned out, it helped get me through my all-expense-paid military vacation. Under trying conditions, I did mental exercises to decide that this tiny scale could be workable and a better decision than returning to HO - that is, if one were to return to model railroading. The couplers were funky, the paint job horrible, but I remember how smoothly the car seemed to roll. I still have the car, tucked away in a 'surplus equipment' box and probably will clean it up and recommission it. I could never throw away such a treasure. Scott
I got to use this pict twice in the same week! Must be good living! This was my first N scale equipment sans the loop of track and power pack:
Great thread!! Love all the stories! My wife and I arrived in the States in 1983. I was headed to California to go to school, so we started in Maryland and drove across the USA in a camper van we bought. Every Sunday we'd just rest in whatever campground we found ourselves on Saturday. One of the things we'd so is play a word game called Boggle. As these usually go, an argument ensued one day over my use of a word. Pronouncing it like the sound 'boing" I used the word "doing" She of course said there's no such word, and the argument raged till I made a bet. If I won, I'd get a locomotive once we got to California. If she won, well, that was moot, because I NEVER lose a bet (because I only bet on sure things). I whipped out the dictionary and there it was: doing (as in what are you doing?) Since the term "locomotive" was undefined, I cashed in the bet for a Rivarossi Y6b mallet. One of the best investments I ever made - I sold it a few years ago for three times what she paid for it!
I'd like to enhance my original post because I only addressed N scale, but I have been model railroading since I was a little steamguy at age 6 in 1953 in western Pennsylvania. I am not going to count the Marx set I got on Christmas 1951 as it was a Christmas looper which didn't last a day, thanks to my beast of a cousin, Cousin Ronny. We moved from a boarding house when my dad's plumbing contracting business took off, and my parent built their own home just outside of town. What a beautiful house and neighborhood, and my dad and mom built a state of the art recreational basement with wet bar, canning, preserving and jarring area, washer and dryer (unheard of in 1952) and a full on party room with my layout as the center of attention. My dad built me a full on Lionel 4x8 layout he got from Lobaughs's Sharon, PA, and it was the Lionel Lines 2-6-4. When he saw my total delight, he bought a GG1, FA set, and we had sights on a Santa Fe Set of F's before we had to move to Florida. The move to Florida financially devastated us, but my dad had a will to work, and we lived in a mobile home park before moving into a home. In Florida, there is never any room for O, so we sold the Lionel, and bought HO, and unbeknownst to me, I had built several Athearn cars as shelf models not knowing they were HO until my parent built me another 4x8 plywood and I installed the HO track, scenery, wiring and structures with help from my buds in the neighborhood, all of whom had layouts. My first HO set was an American Flyer HO 0-6-0 metal boiler set with cars, track and power pack. The right up from '60 to Hurricane Cleo in '64, I worked on that layout, and then my dad had to use my plywood layout for window shutters to protect us from the hurricane. I stored my HO all through college and first marriage, until I bought my first home, and suffered a tennis injury and took up model railroading again in the late seventies. As I started to display my work in my office in City Hall from '78 on, just for me, I met a lot of employees in the City who modeled trains, we formed a club, and all of a sudden we all got into N, and then the story goes to my former post. I have been a fanatic model railroader since, love all scales, but love N best. I will dabble elsewhere, but always go back to N, always refreshed and never burned. It is that kind of scale. Ken "FloridaBoy" Willaman
1968 summer. Revell Postage-Stamp trains set in a box that folded and could be stored on a book shelf.
