When I was a youngster, and I'm going back 60 years to 1949, I had a friend, (only one?) and his father had a small 4x6 HO layout in his bed room. It was not completed, and he was hand laying the track, but what was done was very nicely done. We moved from that town before I ever saw it run.
What I find interesting today is the fact I can picture the layout, and I could take you to the exact house, but I can't remember the kids name.
He only had a few cars, and they were built from wood. I don't remember anything about the trucks or couplers, but I do remember the things were nice and this was the beginning of my interest in modeling. I never saw any locomotives either. He probably kept them under lock and key.
Now, my question. Does anyone else have similar memories?
I remember buying HO car kits and building them before I started to model HO. These would have been available around 1955. I bought them at the 5 and 10 cent store. (Today's Dollar stores)
I still enjoy building as much as I do operating, and I'm really looking forward to getting started again.
Has the hobby moved from modeling to buying models?
Charlie

Charlie B Wrote:When I was a youngster, and I'm going back 60 years to 1949, I had a friend, (only one?) and his father had a small 4x6 HO layout in his bed room. It was not completed, and he was hand laying the track, but what was done was very nicely done. We moved from that town before I ever saw it run.
What I find interesting today is the fact I can picture the layout, and I could take you to the exact house, but I can't remember the kids name.
He only had a few cars, and they were built from wood. I don't remember anything about the trucks or couplers, but I do remember the things were nice and this was the beginning of my interest in modeling. I never saw any locomotives either. He probably kept them under lock and key.
Now, my question. Does anyone else have similar memories?
I remember buying HO car kits and building them before I started to model HO. These would have been available around 1955. I bought them at the 5 and 10 cent store. (Today's Dollar stores)
I still enjoy building as much as I do operating, and I'm really looking forward to getting started again.
Has the hobby moved from modeling to buying models?
Charlie

I Would say the mass majority has but you can still find 'kit' models, and you can buy models and alter them by bashing other kits, detailing them, and custom paint/weathering them

I still build kits, just mostly my kit building has gone to 90-95% buildings and a very small percent of rolling stock kit-building. Im getting more and more into the RTR world of the hobby, although alot of RTR still have a few small details that need to be applied.....

I remember having both a Lionel train in America and a Marklin train when we lived in Germany, but I don't remember what ever happened to either of them, although I remember exactly what both trains looked like, how many cars and what types.

I'm better at visual and olfactory memory, so I'm used to memory quirks like that.

Umm. I thought i posted a reply to this thread, too? :?: :?: :?:

I had a number of influences that propelled me into model railroading. One was the fact that trains were much more a part of everyday life than they are for most people nowadays. The TH&B's elevated right-of-way was right across the street from our front porch, and a CNR line was only a couple of blocks away. There were summer excursions on the train, too, usually to Niagara Falls or Crystal Beach.
But one of the major influences was the older brother of a kid I went to school with. I don't remember the kid's name, or how it came to be that his brother came to my house to set up his HO scale trains in my living room. The trains were definitely better than my parents could afford - they may have been Marklin - somewhat strange in retrospect so soon after the war that a Japanese kid would be setting up German trains in my living room. No matter: I remember that the track was on its own roadbed, and the coaches seemed very well-detailed and very well put-together. And that's about all I remember - oh, and that the older brother's name was Shiggy. This would've be in 1952 or '53.
A couple of years later, I got a Marx O-27 set for Christmas, and while I was glad to have received it, I don't recall much of it at all.
By 1957, after a couple of moves, we finally moved into our own house. One day, my Dad brought home an HO scale loco and a piece of brass flex track (on fibre ties), supposedly just to look over. While I don't recall the loco, I do remember the track, and how the ties were reflected in the shiny sides of the rail. This, for me, was the Daisy Official Red Rider Lever-Action BB Gun, with little or no chance of putting out my eye.
For Christmas that year, an A-B-B-A set of Globe AT&SF diesels, and a handful of freight cars, some flex track, and the beginning of my first layout. While I no longer have those diesels, most of the freight cars are still in my possession, and most are still in use on my current layout.
Thanks, Shiggy, wherever you are.

Wayne

I remember back probably I'm thinking I was 7 or 8 and I had this train set it was in a yellowish colored box and I recall playing with it for hours at a time and I'll never forget the smell of either it was the engine or the transformer after I had ran it for a very long time, I'm 47 this year.
Now to get back into this hobby it had to be maybe 5-6 years ago I was in Toronto with the family on business\leisure and I had noticed at the Covention Center out on Dixon Rd ( we always stayed at the Dbl tree on Dixon rd) if any one is familar with the Convention Centre, well anyway I had seen on the big sign Train Show in big letters , well I dropped the wife and daughter off at the Square One Mall and my son and I hit the train show, I was amazed by what I saw. I never regretted getting into the hobby from that day forward.

Trains were a major part of my life for a long time, too, but this influence was tempered, if not frequently completely crushed, by growing up in a military family that moved every two years, followed by a career of my own in the military in which I moved even more often. "Nothing permanent" was a cardinal rule for the first 38 years of my life, and things like model trains do not survive repeated packing and moving back and forth across the oceans of the world.

Charlie B Wrote:Has the hobby moved from modeling to buying models?
Charlie

I think it has pretty much gone that way. If you are going to have scenery on your layout, you either must build it yourself or hire a professional to build your layout. The same thing is true for track laying, but my local hobby shop has almost stopped stocking kits. They have a few Athearn Blue Box kits on the shelf, but most of their models are r-t-r. They will special order from any of the distributors, but they don't stock kits because they just don't have a market for them. Our society has become a "microwave society" now it would seem and most people don't want to build anything. I am glad that many of the manufacturers still offer kits. I went to a seminar put on by Intermountain at the NMRA convention in Anaheim, and was glad to hear that Intermountain offers any of their cars as undecorated kits. I think they also offer any of their diesels the same way. I think the only thing they don't offer in kit form would be their steam engines. The reason that kits are offered in undecorated only, is that most modelers who would put together an Intermountain kit, will also want to paint and decal it themselves. There is a lot more work involved in building an Intermountain car kit than an Athearn blue box kit. The exception to the lack of kits is in the area of structures in ho scale. I don't remember seeing n-scale structure kits there, but I don't model in n-scale so I don't pay a lot of attention to wat is available in n. Most of their ho scale structures are kits.

N-scale is the same...only worse. Not only are kits not generally available, but since N-scale is not as popular, there are even fewer offerings.

Oddly enough, buildings, bridges and other structures remain in kit form. I think the real clue here is shelf space. How many RTR cars can occupy the same space as a given number of kits? Obviously, buildings and structures already assembled would be absolutely prohibitive.

OTH, I would rather purchase and assemble rolling stock as kits. It makes them easier to modify in the process, and I'm tired of having tp purchase stuff in pre-lettered and numbered form and going through the hassle and risk of re-doing it all, yet rarely do companies offer unlettered stock anymore except occasionally locos.

When I was 8, I got a Tyco Brown Box Chatanooga over n under for Xmas. I spent 3 or 4 years building and running that engine around my 4x8 layout. (well, try to anyway, those Tycos never worked quite right) I bought some Campbell Models then and only built a few. They were all tossed out by my folks, but I have since found a few that I had back then online.

I also enjoy building as well as running. I have scratchbuilt some things and bought kits. I, personally, don't like prebuilt buildings. I will buy ready to run rolling stock and engines, but buildings are another matter.

I have found quite a few laser cut kits, older punch out kits, and other kinds of kits.

Just thought I would chime in...

George

Charlie B Wrote:Has the hobby moved from modeling to buying models?
Charlie

Since we live in an age of "convenience", where we no longer really have to put things together,(except stuff from Ikea), or don't have the time(its easier for some to just to buy RTR models, and plop them on their layouts. Though the manufacturers that offer RTR rolling stock and locos, still offer kits for us that enjoy putting kits together. Some, are even offering pre-weathered RTR. Though, RTR numbers are greater than kits, I don't think we'll see the complete dissolution of kits. There are a great number of us that still enjoy putting kits together.
But...Just try finding something undecorated. They are getting rare. Making custom painting more difficult to do.

I started when I was 2 years old and Santa claus / my father bought an American Flier for ME for Christmas. in the mid sixties I was about 9 or10 We couldn't find AF things. Or my dad told me that because of cost making it prohibitive. We used balsa wood to make ties and rails which we covered with aluminum foil for electric. I guess that would be good article for scratch building . At about that time he told me we would have to change to HO. I rebelled but was over ruled by Dad. I have built plenty of bridges but mostly Kits I would prefer kits but I am thankful for RTR as I can no longer put kits together.
Les

I'll bet you had a lot of fun witih that terain, too!

When I was a little kid in Germany, I used my Lincoln Logs to make bridges, and a cast off set of dominos from the Officer's Club to make the ramps and abutments. I would spend days at a time setting things up just to run the train over, under and around a few times, then tear it all down and start putting the next track challenge together. No scenery, no frills, no nothing, and I thought grades were what I got in school, but that little Marklin engine pulled all my cars anywhere I could dream up, and it never faltered.

If I got good enough grades, I got a special trip to the Marklin store in downtown Munich, where the greatest layout I had ever seen was always running, and they would demonstrate anything you asked for. As I reward I would get some track, or sometimes a car. I could never afford any engines, but I did fall in love with a Marklin Alligator overhead electric. That little engine, developed for the Swiss mountain passes, could turn and climb like a goat, and all I could think of was what I could do on my domino and Lincoln Logs bridgework.

Those were good times.

My interest in model railroading, was simply an expansion of model building. A layout gave me more variety of things to build models of.
Rolling stock was almost exclusively in kit form, with the exception of boxed sets, and just about every piece I had was kit built, and later, as I got better at building, scratchbuilt.
RTR has come about because the "public" wanted it. "I want to run trains now!, and don't have time to be building things". There's a place in this hobby for those who don't want, or haven't the skill, or haven't the desire, to build. So be it. I still have the desire to build, and there are plenty of kits out there to build or bash, or repaint/re-letter.
Yeah, I prefer flextrack. I did, however, experience the art of handlaying track........there are some things I don't really enjoy doing, and track laying is one of them. Scenery, on the other hand......well, so far there is nothing "premade" on the market that I would use, out of the box. Everything gets "modified", or built from scratch.
Do I remember? Don't have to, I still have my first loco, a Varney "docksider", "Lil Joe", and some of my very first scratchbuilt rolling stock. They may not get any run time now, but many of my early kit builds do.