I started in 1961

[Larry]

What year did you build your 1st train layout? Mine was in Miami, Fla. in a rented house.

 

[Selector]

I built my first in the late winter of 2005, and it was in an inherited house.

-Crandell

 

[jeffrey-wimberly]

Got started in the hobby in 64 but didn't MY first layout until 67. It was a reshuffle of one my father set up for me the previous year. It was just two mainlines and a spur on a 5 x 10 plywood sheet. Try finding one of those anymore. I added some scenery and a few buildings.

 

[Airslide]

1984. i got a GI Joe HO scale set for christmas. i would go to the mall every weekend with my allowance (10.00) and get more stuff. I had an oval on a grass mat a few switches on a 4X8 board in my room on 2 saw horses not a real layout but it kept me out of trouble for a few months. a couple of years later i got a marklin Z scale set...wish i would have kept that. my interest in the hobby was reactivated in 2007 but i have not built a layout yet. kind of short on time and money these days...

 

[straight-track]

My first layout

My dad who is still living @ 93 bought me a Lionel set in 1949 and we worked together (well I did a lot of watching at age 8 ) on setting it up in December of that year. We packed it away yearly putting it up only at Christmas. Eventually when I reached age 12 I had it permanently built on a pair of 5' x 9' pingpong tables set together to form the letter L. My Mom made plaster of Paris roads and sidewalks and built the town up. Plasticville buildings and Lionel accessories abound ! I spent many many hours with that " O " gauge empire ! Mom is gone, Dad is slipping and the empire is long since gone , but the memories will live on forever ! Joe

 

[UP2CSX]

My dad built my first layout in 1952. I slowly added on to it until it was about a 9x16 Lionel O27 empire in about 1960. High school and girls kind of killed the hobby for me at that point so the whole thing got packed away. I got married in 1966 and wanted my trains. Found out my mom sold everything at a yard sale for $15. I'm sure some of that stuff would be worth hundreds of dollars today. Built a new HO layout in 1968 and that lasted five years until kids and a career took up all my time. I started my current layout in 2007, so guess I've been at it on and off for about 55 years now.

 

[Wojo]

My first (not assembled by dad) layout was a Mantua steam set built on a 4x6 homosote board in 1961. Prior to this adventure, I attempted to build a couple of Athearn yellow box kits with sprung trucks that needed assembly. I added a few custom line switches, Revel and Plasticville structures, and some Roundhouse kits that are still running on my current layout.

 

[alcoman]

1981 was when I first built a table dedicated to trains. Just a 4x6 with a circle of track. We had to move on short notice, and it was a couple of years before I got to try something more complicated.

 

[drew1125]

1993...I was 33 at the time...I only had 3 daughters then, & we were still living in the first house my wife & I had bought...

 

[iomalley]

Well I'm 36, no layout yet...lots of display cases tho.

I used to run on my father's layout until it was dismantled 3 years ago.

I bought my first house 5 years ago, but with upstairs and kitchen renos, haven't got around to start a layout. I have a 18x40 room in the basement, but there's 2 cut (and broken) floor joists over top and will be replaced in the spring (finally) so I can actually use the room and start a layout!

My wife has the bathroom reno scheduled next, but the joists are underneath the sink/toilet so I have to fix it for both the reno and layout!

 

[kenw]

When my older brother was told by the neighbor (who was keeping him while mom and dad were bringing me into the world) told him that "his new little brother was coming home", he replied "well, I better go put up my trains".

He wasn't fast enough.....that was 1955.

There has almost always been a layout of some type/size in the extended family altho there were years where display shelves had to suffice. Today I'm the only one with a permanent layout, and it is providing a home-away-from-home for several pieces that need to stretch their legs on occasion. This layout is the 1st one that wasn't free-standing, and is in a dedicated room. It was built in ~1990.

 

[fiend540]

I have never had a real layout before. I was always interested in them because of my Grandfather and while we would go to train shows and collect rolling stock we never got around to building one. Eventually I got side track with racing cars, and then my grandfather passed away and everything was put in storage. About a year ago the bug bit me again so I plan on building my first official layout this year!

 

[ICG/SOU]

My father built my first one in 1980-1981. It was the second choice of diversions, since the first was a Tyco slot car track from the J.C. Penney catalog the Christmas before. The racing car set broke on Christmas Eve and never worked right, and after 6 months of back and forth with Tyco, my father sent it all back, and asked me if I wanted a train. I said yes.

I had a small oval on the 4x8 masonite sheet that he had bought for the race track set, an Athearn SW7, an Athearn Railbox boxcar, an MDC Thrall ATSF hopper, and a Tyco operating caboose. Soon it was a full loop with passing siding (Bachmann's blinking bridge and trestle), three spurs, with one the Tyco coal trestle, and a small town. I ran it for about 10 years, until my parents wanted to put carpet down, and I was away at school.

The layout I'm building now is technically my first.

 

[tankist]

i got my first set in 1985, i was 5 then, (probably way to early). made by PIKO, then government owned east german manufacturer. it was the second best set available behind the iron curtain at that time and later i leaned that grandpa spent about 3 month worth of his income to get this even with that it wasn't something that is just available and off the shelf. The day I came over to to grandpas to find that simple oval of track on the floor I will never forget, probably the brightest of them all.

while it had no turnouts included (these were only in the top of the line set, available only in capital. scared to even think of the cost) unlike simplier sets mine had full length C-C diesel engine with geared transmition (not a rubber band euro critter) 5 long coaches and while the rest had to do with batteries and alternatives, an actual power pack! (that had to be modified for local outlet). when i got older we had spesial meets where every one lucky enough to own any MRR stuff will bring it over and we try and build bigger layout (carefully marking our stuff , lol). absence of turnout was solved with manual turnout - two pieces of track on top of the other. dedicated "switch-man" would then snap the proper rail in place. while some building kits were sold most of our stuff was hand made. loads and loads of fun

i never really left the idea to build proper layout and was a chair modeler for years .finally it bit me last summer... negotiation with SO wasn't easy but the rest is in pictures

 

[AyTrane]

I think it was about 1987-88. I got an HO starter set that I kept setting up on the kitchen floor and running trains in circles on nickel track. My dad came home one day with a bunk bed and put a plywood board up on the top bunk to permanently put the trains on. Years later as the trains started to expand, with an elevated line around the ceiling, the plywood moved to the bottom bunk for more width (~5x8). That lasted for many of years until we moved to South Dakota, then the trains got a room all to their self, and a bigger layout was born. I can find pictures of the old layouts, but not the one in SD. I have since moved on from that house, and moved back to Omaha, where I have my current layout.

So I guess I've had trains with me my whole life, and the layouts just keep getting bigger and bigger...as does my obsession with them.

So does anyone still have their first set? I tried running my old engines once, they must have been overworked, because they don't do much anymore.

 

[Gary B]

I guess I'm very much like Kenw. Like him I was born in 1955 into a household were my brother
already had trains. In my case Dad had built a fold up table with 2X4 shelves to hold equipment
for my brother's Lionel warbonnet F units. I don't remember which Christmas I got a steamer of my
own to run.

I was about ten when I first saw Plasticville HO buildings at a store and knew I wanted them.
Told they didn't fit with our trains, I ask for an HO train that Christmas. So that year I got a
Varney B&O 0-4-0 Dockside set. (What else!) Away went the Lionel. Since then it's been HO
and mine all the way. (I wonder where I would be now if that store had the O Scale buildings?)
Then about my second year of Hish School and trains were not cool, so I tore down my by now fair
sized layout. But I never felt I was done.

Realizing my love for trains, my wife bought me one our first Christmas, but I didn't keep it
since I didn't have space to do the things I wanted to. When our first son was three, I built
him a 4X4 Ho layout. That became the basis of the current layout. My boys, now grown men still
have a limit interest but for now it's my project.

So yes Christmas and trains will always be linked together for me.

 

[joe circus]

So does anyone still have their first set? I tried running my old engines once, they must have been overworked, because they don't do much anymore.

Yes! Like many others here, I started with a train as a Christmas present. I still have the Rivarossi NYC from 1963 ( I think ) along with the couple of cars and caboose

Interesting enough, my sis also got a train, a little yellow switcher with a couple of cars, in my posession as well...

 

[Cjcrescent]

Had my first layout in 1959. My Dad built it for me on a 4x8 sheet of plywood. It was AF S-gauge.

I built my first HO layout 2 years later on the same board with, two snap switches forming a small yard, a Varney train set, and a Trains 4-4-2 and several Silver Streak car kits. Ran that until 1969, adding new equip/track all the time, when I had to tear it up and put up the equipment. In 1973 I pulled everything back down, and just restarted where I left off. I have one piece of the old equipment left, my first Silver Streak car kit, part of the rest I lost to the zamac disease and most of what was left, I sold.

Now I'm on my 8th and final layout. I figure that it will take a good 15-20 yrs to make it "complete".

 

[flyboy2610]

So does anyone still have their first set?

I still have some of the accessories (buildings and such) from when I was a kid. Right now that stuff is upstairs in the playroom where my kids have a Bachmann EZ Track layout set up on the carpet. It's an oval of track with two turnouts. I'm sure it will be slowly expanded!

 

[Irongrave]

I remember my dad building a small layout in the basement for me when i was 5 or 6 so 91-92 out of a tyco set up. still have the board that it came on some were in the house. as i got older we kept expanding and expanding. now have a good sized layout.