Horses and Iron Horses: It started again . . .

"Toy trains allow boys to be men, and men to be boys"

It was over the 2009 Christmas holidays at a family dinner, I wondered into my brother-in-law's basement. Like every Christmas, he had his post-war Lionel train set under the Christmas tree. A jet black steam engine on 3 silver rails, surrounded by a sea of green plywood, punctuated by an occassional Plasticville building. I was drawn to the vintage transformer, just like the first time in my early childhood. Power on, turn the throttle, and the steamer lighted and growled to a start. I was hooked again.

In childhood, it started in 1959 with a battery operated HO train and a small loop of track. I don't remember much about that one, other than my dad putting a cigarette in the smokestack so my train would smoke. I asked him how I was going to get the train to smoke when he wasn't there, so he blew some smoke into a jar and gave it to me. I was pretty excited about that until I tried to use the smoke. I was disappointed, but fortunately, I did not take up smoking . . .

But the best memories were that American Flyer S-gauge set on a 4X8 table. I still remember the Rocket Launcher car that would remotely launch. Another direct hit on the Plasticville school building! Hmm . . . today I would be reported to the Department of Homeland Security. Then there was the Tie Ejector Car, remote switches, track with real ties, and the bright yellow rocket sled with the pilot ejection seat.

But somewhere around 6th grade, I was ready for serious model railroading. I sold it all in a yard sale, and took my $45 and bought N-scale equipment (wonder what the AF equipment is worth today? Ouch!). I could fit a lot of railroading on that same 4x8 table. The table was on pulleys and could be hoisted up or lowered down from the ceiling. It had multiple mainlines, crossovers, and block wiring. Well, I got the cork roadbed and the track down and then discovered girls. So, the layout was hoisted up to the ceiling and collected dust for a few years before going the way of the yard sale.

Trains were absent for the next 17 years until 1983 when my wife noticed my interest in my friend Phil's trains. She bought me some HO Athearn trains. Little did she know how obsessive I can get in this hobby. We were soon to move, so I got to work on a small switching layout. The next year we moved to Hagerstown and the switching layout became a 4X6 tabletop layout. I had way too much free time at my Public Health Service job, so some days I spend assembling Athearn kits and painting Woodland Scenics models.

After 2 years, we were back to York. The house was a fixer-upper, but it had a full, unfinished basement. Oh, yeah! But the house came first. We worked like crazy painting, wallpapering, gardening, and then finally I finished off the basement. In the meantime, I found the perfect track plan in RMC, so I finished off a 11x13 train room. Benchwork was built from Pallet lumber. Return loops ran through the wall and into the furnace area (causing great embarrassment to Judy as she had to have the furnace guy crawl under the track to do his work). I painted blue sky and clouds on the wall and managed to lay about half of the track. Layout work was punctuated with dragging Judy and the kids to train shows, Steamtown, Strasburg, and East Broad Top. She really was a good sport about it. But, alas, the family grew to 6, life got too busy, and the trains collected dust until they were put into storage when we moved to a new home in 1999.

So, back to Christmas 2009, staring wide-eyed at those vintage Lionel trains. I had a few of my own that I picked up at train shows. There was a Marx 666 Steam Loco and a mix of Marx and Lionel cars, a Lionel transformer, 6 turnouts, and way, way too much old O27 track. Should I get back into the hobby? I have the time now. Not only that, I had a grandaughter soon to be born. It is settled. I needed to get back into trains -- for her!

It was back to train shows. I called my friend Dave who had invited me to TCA York a few years ago. He gave me an update on the hobby and we went to a Greenburg show. I bought a few Lionel cars and Plasticville buildings and did a lot of looking. It was then that I found out that in O Gauge, you can model classic postwar or scale hi-rail. I was fascinated with the postwar trains and especially the accessories, but then there were those incredibly detailed Scale Locomotives with command control, smoke, and sound. At the World's Greatest Hobby show at Dulles, I saw the latest scale offerings from MTH, Lionel, and Williams. This was going to be a hard decision. One of my friends, John, was a big MTH fan. We went to a couple of train shows together and he quietly showed me the virtues of scale MTH. Suddenly, my Plasticville buildings looked too small because, well, they WERE too small. The decision was made. Scale Hi-Rail it was. But I was still going to make room for some of those cool post-war accessories.

Now I was beginning to realize just how big these trains were, and how much room they require. But this time I wanted to actually finish a layout, so I was definitely going to go small. I settled on a 5x10 foot design with a high track and a low track. I built the table, topped with 2" of blue foam and laid out some tinplate track. I arranged and re-arranged the track, but I wasn't satisfied with the design. So, I was back on the web looking for new designs and I discovered a 6x10 dual mainline layout with beautiful mountains and scenery. I made a few design changes to allow O45 curves on the inner loop, and O54 curves on the outer. The plan was set.