Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Model railroaders.

Any boys like to play with trains?

No room for a layout but I sure hope to see some pics.


Denny.

I don't have the money or the time but I'd sure like to see pictures too.

I packed up my Marklin set up in 1959 and have not set up since. I've taken the engines out of the box a couple of times since.
Maybe I should sell it.

Jim

I have some tracks from a train I had as a kid if any one wants to buy em, there probly 50 years old and all metal.

Model railroading was huge when I was a kid; but our home did not have room. Then rock, pot, technology and that disease we call liberalism came along and it took a slide. I really don't know why young folks don't get into these hobbies much anymore, except that they have their faces in tech and video games too much.

Qtip
Soli Deo Gloria!

You might call this a short line railway.
As has been noted, it takes a lot of room to run a train.
This is just sitting.
I have added an engine since this picture.

I had a cousin whose husband was a totally committed model railroader. He was disabled from a railroad job and his father and father in law were both engineers so you might say it was in his blood. He graduated before his death to the scale that actually made steam and you could ride. His engine was about 3 ft long and they towed it everywhere to meets. The best model layout I have ever seen is the stretch of the transcontinental railroad displayed at the train museum in the old depot in Ogden, Utah. The museum is a great one and the display outstanding as it represents an actual scale section of real track and winds throughout the museum. Incidentally the second floor of this museum houses the John M Browning museum with his original gunshop re-created. It houses many prototypes and a fine collection of functional 'Miniture' firearms belonging to one of his sons.It's a half day visit at the least.

My Lionel set is in storage. I have the big locomotive that whistled and blew smoke. As a kid, it always got set up in the basement on a sheet of plywood with the crossings, town, side-dump car, etc. I'm lucky the loco still works. I got it going fast enough it rolled off the track to the floor several times.

I have an old HO layout boxed up. Most are from my childhood. My son has a Lionel O gauge set that I've expanded for him. He plays with it, integrating his other toys. We always have it out at Christmas.
I think that the takeover and focus going to "model railroading" that adults use instead of "toy trains" that kids can play with has had something to do with its lapse in popularity. As with shooting, hunting and fishing, each generation has to spend the time to pass on the joy of the hobby or it grows old and dies.

I know a man who spent almost a year building a two story post and beam barn with a two million dollar price tag. The barn was just for a model train layout that covered both stories. I have not seen it but for two million just for the housing it must be one heck of a setup.

Here is an outfit that specializes in them in the Rogue Valley in Southern Oregon... they ship all over the world, with their biggest customers and customer volume is in Europe...

With offers from folks to Boy Scout and especially Cub Scout troops, we have had invitations to take the boys to people's homes to see their train sets...

these are grandpa aged retirees, that love to show off their train sets...

we have taken kids to see guys who have their entire yard set up as a large diorama with larger scale train sets... to other guys who have built retirement homes and have smaller train sets going all thru their homes, via almost every room... "tunnels" going thru the walls... some of them on the floor and some of them entirely on shelving near the ceiling thru out the home..

bottom line, have seen a batch of guys who have invited the Cub Scouts and Boy Scouts in to see their train sets....as an adult you ask them how much have invested in it all... I've heard figures from 100,000 to 250,000 bucks...

so some of these guys are HEAVILY into Model Trains...

even the small N thru Z scale trains from Micro Trains, check out the prices on that stuff! but you look at it under a magnifying glass and it is amazing the minute detail they can put into them...

A very impressive layout was in a bank lobby in downtown Cincinnati that I saw one Christmas while visiting my MIL.

Not a bank, at the Cincy museum.

http://www.cincymuseum.org/holiday/duke-energy-holiday-trains?gclid=CN7dr8CanLsCFRGCfgodsVkAgQ

I've got some vintage American Flyer stuff that'll go to the grandkids when I'm gone but in a few weeks I'll be setting up a Frontier Locomotive set my folks bought me in '58 for the little guys to play with around Christmas.This has been a family tradition since my kids were little.

Thought I had a pic..my two yr old grandson's first engineering lesson.

anyone have a train going around their Christmas tree?

No since I came down stairs Christmas morning a LONG, time ago, and my father was playing with my "O", scale Commodore Vanderbilt.
This picture is a "Z" scale.

If I got into it I would have to buy one of these. Dad took me to see the last run of one when I was about 4. 1,000,000 + lbs on the rails. If you look up C&O H8 locomotives some sources list the weight less than that but Baldwin lied so they could get them delivered. The engineer's union sued because they were getting shorted on pay when they found out the true weight on drivers.

I set up 2 loops of 027 track on a hollow core door, added some lighted ceramic buildings and a 4 ft fake tree. It's all in the big front window so it can be seen from the road. I'll get pictures and post them tomorrow.

I have over 22 boxes and storage containers full of train stuff, all O/027 size.

Dale

I've got a fair HO setup in storage -- the robbers must have been pretty bummed when they ripped the corners off the cartons -- they didn't take anything.