"Toy trains allow boys to be men, and men to be boys"
It was over the 2009 Christmas holidays at a family dinner, I wondered into my brother-in-law's basement. Like every Christmas, he had his post-war Lionel train set under the Christmas tree. A jet black steam engine on 3 silver rails, surrounded by a sea of green plywood, punctuated by an occassional Plasticville building. I was drawn to the vintage transformer, just like the first time in my early childhood. Power on, turn the throttle, and the steamer lighted and growled to a start. I was hooked again.
In childhood, it started in 1959 with a battery operated HO train and a small loop of track. I don't remember much about that one, other than my dad putting a cigarette in the smokestack so my train would smoke. I asked him how I was going to get the train to smoke when he wasn't there, so he blew some smoke into a jar and gave it to me. I was pretty excited about that until I tried to use the smoke. I was disappointed, but fortunately, I did not take up smoking . . .
But somewhere around 6th grade, I was ready for serious model railroading. I sold it all in a yard sale, and took my $45 and bought N-scale equipment (wonder what the AF equipment is worth today? Ouch!). I could fit a lot of railroading on that same 4x8 table. The table was on pulleys and could be hoisted up or lowered down from the ceiling. It had multiple mainlines, crossovers, and block wiring. Well, I got the cork roadbed and the track down and then discovered girls. So, the layout was hoisted up to the ceiling and collected dust for a few years before going the way of the yard sale.
After 2 years, we were back to York. The house was a fixer-upper, but it had a full, unfinished basement. Oh, yeah! But the house came first. We worked like crazy painting, wallpapering, gardening, and then finally I finished off the basement. In the meantime, I found the perfect track plan in RMC, so I finished off a 11x13 train room. Benchwork was built from Pallet lumber. Return loops ran through the wall and into the furnace area (causing great embarrassment to Judy as she had to have the furnace guy crawl under the track to do his work). I painted blue sky and clouds on the wall and managed to lay about half of the track. Layout work was punctuated with dragging Judy and the kids to train shows, Steamtown, Strasburg, and East Broad Top. She really was a good sport about it. But, alas, the family grew to 6, life got too busy, and the trains collected dust until they were put into storage when we moved to a new home in 1999.
It was back to train shows. I called my friend Dave who had invited me to TCA York a few years ago. He gave me an update on the hobby and we went to a Greenburg show. I bought a few Lionel cars and Plasticville buildings and did a lot of looking. It was then that I found out that in O Gauge, you can model classic postwar or scale hi-rail. I was fascinated with the postwar trains and especially the accessories, but then there were those incredibly detailed Scale Locomotives with command control, smoke, and sound. At the World's Greatest Hobby show at Dulles, I saw the latest scale offerings from MTH, Lionel, and Williams. This was going to be a hard decision. One of my friends, John, was a big MTH fan. We went to a couple of train shows together and he quietly showed me the virtues of scale MTH. Suddenly, my Plasticville buildings looked too small because, well, they WERE too small. The decision was made. Scale Hi-Rail it was. But I was still going to make room for some of those cool post-war accessories.
This time I wanted to actually finish a layout, so I was definitely going to go small. On the web I discovered a 6x10 dual mainline layout with beautiful mountains and scenery. I made a few design changes to allow O42 curves on the inner loop, and O54 curves on the outer. The plan was set.
So here I have posted the trials and triumphs of layout construction. I hope it brings smiles, laughter and a few tears . . .
Bob Glorioso
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