As a kid I was quite the train enthusiast. I inherited an old Lionel set that belonged to my uncle when he was a kid. I received in when I was about 8 or 9 years old. By then the train set was already over 20-25 years old. That would have been around 1963 or 1964. I had that train set until 1982 when I lost it in a house fire.
I did have another full blown HO set I set up around 1979. It I had all the switches and turn outs working and the entire thing set up pretty elaborate to run 2 engines at the same time. My situation changed, and I ended up giving the entire thing to another little boy who was enthralled with model railroading.
My next endeavor to get back into model railroading was getting a couple of those larger scale Christmas sets that go under the Christmas tree. But they came out only once a year.
Meanwhile, I still had a love for railroading and model railroading. In our travels we visited many, many railroad museums whenever one was in any kind of close proximity to where we were camping.
One year for our 2 week vacation, we visited every railroad museum in the state of Indiana. We traveled to 4 different State Parks and made the entire trip all about railroading. It was truly a great vacation.
My next resurgence of model railroading was around 2007 after my daughter left for the Navy. We had an extra room then and I started building a new layout. This was great, and I got to work on it for about 4 years, and the AND HER HUSBAND came back home and while with us ... had our first grandchild. Well, as you can imagine, the train came down as we needed that bedroom back.
Since then, we moved into a different house. Between remodeling the old one to sell it, and remodeling the new one to live in it, and between working, camping, and lots and lots of other things that life threw at us, I've not been able to build a new set.
About the time (in the new house), I thought I could break out all the model railroad stuff and build a new layout, my son divorced and came home with is 1 year old boy and has been living back home with us for the last 6 years. As destructive as that little guy was, and with no more bedroom space, the train has just remained put up.
I'd love to build another layout, but simply do not have room with son and grandson living with us.
Here's a few photos of where my original layout was going. I had a DCC system, 3 engines and a non DCC system, call "John Bull".
My overall plan was to build a model railroad campground. So as i was building the layout, I was also building my world.
The first part of the assembly was to lay some basic track. Next, the people who work on the railroad had to have somewhere to live, so a small worker's campground was built for them.
My wife got into the "it" also and she started designing the "visitor's" campground.
I would absolutely love to start all over again with a new layout now, and maybe now I finally have time. It took 13 years, but just last week, I finally finished with the last bit of remodel in our current house.
Last year for Christmas, I did set this up. It was sooooo much fun. But it came down after Christmas. FYI, this is the John Bull engine.
