Model Railroading > How Old were YOU when you got involved with Trains ??

Question: Is their an 'age requirement' for a person to become a bonafide "Live Steamer" or Model Railroader, or Railfan ??

In the attached photo, we have a potential Live Steamer along with his 'sponsor' .
The new potential member has even brought along his own Trains and has them set up on the club's elevated track.

In the foreground, the Club has not fully completed their mainline construction because the fourth rail of the multi-gauge track has not been laid yet!

Photo from my Archives.

Ken Shattock
KRK

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Great photo, Ken.

I was about 4 or 5 years old when my Dad took me down to Pacific Electric's Sentous Yard just east of Culver City to watch a Freight Motor switch the yard and then take off west for Culver City and west to Talamantes at Sepulveda Blvd.

I remember, to this day I thought, "that little engine cannot pull that big train!" and off it went whistling for Fairfax Ave.(La Cienega Blvd today).

That was the day I became a railfan.

--Jim Baker

Interesting that you post this on the Model Railroading board, but appropriate.

When I was twelve, my mother told me I could have a train set in the basement of a new house into which we were moving as an incentive to be agreeable to the move. After we moved, plywood, a power pack HO track, a locomotive and freight cars along with some structures and scenery was bought and I had a modest layout.

However, I never built and elaborate set and then we moved again to a house with no space for a layout. Subsequently, I graduated from high school and went off to college.

The process of thinking about what kind of model railroad I wanted and which prototypes to follow got me interested in the real thing. With a Bellefonte Central line not far from my house and trips to the Harrisburg and the Horseshoe Curve courtesy of Penn State Model Railroad Club members and my father, I got hooked.

...hmmm, born in '51, Portland Oregon area, and remember my dad taking me to watch Southern Pacific freight and passenger trains that were still steam powered, so just how old would I have been? I've been chasing trains ever since. As a bonus my grandfather was the head station agent at Portland Union Station and in those days my cousin and I had the run of the place, inside and out, and were on a first name basis with all the Red Caps, how times have changed...
...my first model train was a wind up tin plate that I received for my third Christmas, I believe it was made by Marx, been "playing with model trains ever since...

cheers,

Lorne Miller



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 01/12/14 12:22 by Espeenut.

Born in November 1949 and got first train set in December 1949--I was 7 weeks old and been around trains for all 64 years.

Marty Harrison
Knob Noster, MO

From what my family has told me I was 2 years old. we lived in a small town in Montana, Plains, and one day I went missing. I had walked the 4 blocks, crossing a busy 2 lane highway and was found standing right next to the tracks watching the Northern Pacific trains roll by. That was half a century ago.......

11 years old, (Summer 1996). Friend of mine had been given a HO scale Bachmann train set for his B-day. My parents saw that I liked It so much, that christmas I got my first HO scale Bachmann train set. The rest is history.

I had been a fan of railroads and trains in general before that point in my childhood, but wasn't actively railfanning, or chasing trains. Just catching what I could see out the back windows of a parents car when driving around. It wasn't until I joined a model railroad club in 2001, (and later joined Trainorders.com in 2003), when I began to mature into a full fledged rail enthusiast.

Mr. MRL ~ so young...

Around 5 years old. I grew up along the Georgia Railroad's east end. In a small town you are never too far from the tracks, however, for a 5 year old a half mile is about as accessible as one 100 miles away. Luckily my great grandfather and great grandmother lived a block away from the tracks. I can remember to this day Papa grabbing his felt hat and walking cane and asking me if I wanted to walk over to the tracks. Magically, to this 5 year old, about 10 minutes after reaching the tracks a train would roll by. In the 1966-70 time frame the Georgia Railroad was still running scheduled passenger service, so the only real magic involved was my great grandfather's passion for trains being passed to his great grandson.

My passion was helped along in the incubation process by my grandparents, great uncle, and parents. Happening to be backyard neighbors to W. Forrest Beckum, Jr also helped tremendously.

Jay

Must be something about growing up in Montana. I was two or three, standing in my grandmother's kitchen window, enthralled, watching the front of the Little Joe about a half block away that had brought the westbound Olympian Hiawatha into Deer Lodge. I remember being fascinated with the pan and catenary. I hounded my mom for an electric train by the time I was ten (it was Marx) and I remember buying plastic HO boxcar kits with sprung trucks at the 88¢ Store in Bozeman in the mid-'60s. I still have the Aurora Bookshelf N scale set I got in the late '60s. I continued with Multiple Scale Disorder for many years, and still deal with it occasionally. - dano

When I was 5 years old my dad would take me down to the Dravis St overpass that crossed over Great Northern's Interbay yard in Seattle and we would spend never enough time watching the trains. In 1953 steam engines were still doing a lot of the switching and I still recall seeing the steam coming up around the bridge. My older brother was also a railfan and into HO models.

That same year we moved to Bainbridge Island and away from trains, my only exposure was our trips to Seattle every few months and so my interest kind of faded. It was not until 1977 or 78 while living in Tacoma, WA that I got back into the hobby. I might have gotten involved sooner, but from 1968 to 1972 I was in the Navy and then 1972 to 1976 I was partying, working and chasing women. Then one (woman) caught me in 1976 and it was over.

4-5yrs old. First train set when I was 6yrs old. It was the Tyco Golden Eagle, still have the big gold with blue letters Alco C6XX that came with the set. Lost the matching caboose years ago when I was 12 in a move from N.H to FL.

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From the time I was born. My parents lived in a house my dad built that had a clear view across a big vacant field of the L&N depot at St. Matthews, Ky, a suburb of Louisville. I could watch L&N and C&O trains daily and nightly. As years passed, I became a frequent visitor to the depot and the agent used to let me listen to the dispatcher's morse code. We even flew kites from the top of an old box car that sat on a short piece of disconnected track in the field. I even caught boarded the local to Lexington there once or twice before it was discontinued. Only two passenger trains stopped there; one to Lexington and one to Cincinnati and both were flag stops. Twice each day, the local freight to or from DeCoursey Yard (Cincinnati area) stopped to work the station's team track and a few local industries and the crews let me ride the engines as they switched a few times. How could one not become a railfan with this show happening daily?

Here's a painting I did of the Lexington train, L&N 20, the "Bluegrass Local" at the station. The tower was used to control the gates on local roads for the locals. Today, the depot, team track and two of the three main tracks are gone. If you go there, you will find remnants of the old asphalt depot platform.

-JH

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I got my first train set 3 hours after I was born.

I got a ride in a Great Northern (diesel electric)doodlebug on GN's Hannah line in northeastern ND for eighteen miles with the engineer. It was really noisy, but I was hooked from there and eventually became a locomotive engineer.

I don't remember. I think I came out of the chute (same time as Trains first issue Nov 1940)as a train nut. Maybe it was from Mom driving Dad to the roundhouse for work before I was born, but I don't ever remember ever not liking or being fascinated by steam engines or having some sort of model trains around me.
It's in my genes I guess.

I was one years of age , my first Christmas....I still have the set, H O scale American Flyer it was purchased Nov. 1960......... I've
been hook ever since.

So far as i can remember back. We lived in St.Gilgen near Salzburg, then Deutsches Reich, and we had an overlook over the Salzkammergut Lokalbahn, 760 mm narrow gauge and over the Wolfgangsee.

Erwin from Austria

I lived next to the Atlantic Coast Line Perry cut-off about 12 miles north of Tampa.
A train came by and blew it's whistle,that scared my mother and out I came,that's
how old I was.



BTW Nice painting,Jim.


Uncle Joe,Seffner,fl.

Not sure, but some of my earliest memories are playing with a train set I think another family gave my older brother. I must have been 3 or 4 years old. We figured out that we could kneel next to the track, lean forward and put our tongue across the rails and get a mild electric shock. It became a contest how long you could be shocked. Of course, we never let our mother see us.

We finally told Mom about this activity nearly 40 years later. She said that if she had seen us do it, she would have thrown out the train set. I'll wait until we're in the afterlife to tell her what I did during college.

Mark
Salem, Oregon