How’d you get here?

This forum is dedicated to Riding Scale Railroading with propulsion using other than steam (Hydraulics, diesel engines, gas engines, electric motors, hybrid etc.)

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Gra2472
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Joined: Sat Jan 25, 2020 8:02 pm
Location: Monte Rio California

How’d you get here?

Post by Gra2472 »

Good evening railroaders. There are a lot of technical discussion on this board so I thought I would lighten things up a little just for fun. My wife and I were talking, and she asked me something. How did you get into this hobby? I thought that it might make for an interesting discussion. This is a rather small hobby that is fairly unknown, and takes more than a little effort. This came from her discussions with coworkers that are often shocked that we have trains, even more so that we actually ride on them.

I started with my fathers HO scale model railroad. When I was about 10, he brought home a 7.5” gauge West Valley Baldwin Electric. Well, that was it. I was hooked of course. We (I) ran the wheels off of it at the Portola Valley & Alpine railroad in the ‘80s, and even made a few trips to the Goleta Valley railroad. The locomotive got shelved for a few years during my first marriage, but I still had a g-scale layout. I didn’t buy my first steam locomotive until after my divorce. I started with an Allen Chloe, that I quickly sold when I bought my mogul. I still have the old electric locomotive, and run it often. Every railroad has it’s old reliable.
7.5" Allen Mogul
3 x 7.5" West Valley Baldwin Westinghouse Electrics
The railroad is almost done.
G. Augustus
Monte Rio, Ca.
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Dick_Morris
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by Dick_Morris »

It started with an interest in trains, probably encouraged by my mom who also liked trains, from as early as i can remember. Circa 1956 my uncle and his Barbershop Quartet were an exhibitor at a hobby show at the Shrine Exhibition Hall in Los Angeles. Amongst the wide range of hobbies there was an Eifel Tower made of toothpicks, an organ grinder with a monkey, and an exhibit by the L.A. Live Steamers that displayed Walt Disney's Lilly Belle. I gravitated to the trains and have been hooked ever since.
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Bill Shields
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by Bill Shields »

so...you didn't want to build an imitation steam loco from toothpicks?
Too many things going on to bother listing them.
SteveM
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by SteveM »

I've always been interested in mechanical things, as my dad and grandfather before me. Cars, bikes, trains, whatever.

I have so many pictures of me and my brothers standing in, on, and next to trains at various train museums.

When I was 8, I woke up on Christmas morning, looked out the window and saw a Heilan Lassie in the back yard all steamed up and ready to go. None of the other presents mattered.

I grew up at Pioneer Valley Live Steamers.

My dad hung his trains up on the wall after we all left home. I kept bugging him to take one down and run it.

After dad passed away, my brothers and I each inherited one. I got the tank engine that my dad actually built.

I need to pressure test the boiler and get it running, but I am still in the process of rebuilding my shop after a move.

Steve
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Erskine Tramway
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by Erskine Tramway »

There was a railroad background in my family. My maternal grandfather and an uncle worked at the Whitcomb Co. Another of mom's brothers worked on the C&N-W Ry. My dad worked on a couple of railroads when he was younger and worked for a company building coaling towers. A few years after I was born in Janesville, Wis., the R&GN Ry. 15" gauge opened in the local Riverside Park. We rode it when we'd come over from Milwaukee to visit my grandmother and uncles. We moved to Illinois, and the railroad moved up to Wisconsin Dells after they got run off by the NIMBYs along the river. When we lived in Illinois, I got started in HO, then some HOn3 model trains. When I was in High School, I got a Little Engines catalog and dreamed of a 1-1/2" scale, 4-3/4" gauge, Colorado narrow gauge line around the house. As it turned out, just before graduation, a friend took me up to The Dells and I got a job as Conductor on the R&GN. By July, I was the relief Engineer, and the next year the regular guy left, and I was the engineer for the next fourteen seasons, beside working in the shop as Draftsman, a skill I'd picked up in High School. By the middle '70's the Company was failing, and my new wife suggested I needed a 'real' job. There was a Draftsman job open at 'Big Joe Manufacturing, who built forklifts. I interviewed, they showed my where my board was, and it looked out over the Milwaukee Road mainline. There was no way I could sit there and watch trains go by. So, I started calling my friends, and the one who worked for the BN said they were hiring in Nebraska. Well, we had to do something, so we drove out to Alliance, and I applied, took the physical, and we came back home. There was some doubt that they'd hire somebody with glasses 'off the street', but in June they called up and asked if I still wanted to work for the BN. "When and where?" Brakeman class at Alliance, and then go to work in Edgemont, SD. There was no housing in Edgemont, so we moved our trailer house out to Hot Springs. After a year or so in a trailer park, we bought 10 acres west of town, which improved the drive time considerably and moved the trailer out there. The 20 acres next door came available, so we bought that to avoid having neighbors on that side. A few years later we built a house with a big front yard. By then I was interested in models of Sir Arthur Heywood's 15" railroads, running on Gauge 1 track so I built a railroad in the yard. I started selling Ga.1 Heywood models, and one of my customers took my drawings and had some castings made for 7/-1/2" gauge cars. In return, he gave me three, and eventually six, sets. Now, I needed someplace to run them. So, that's how the Erskine Tramway came to be.
Former Locomotive Engineer and Designer, Sandley Light Railway Equipment Works, Inc. and Riverside & Great Northern Railway 1962-77
BN RR Locomotive Engineer 1977-2014, Retired
Glenn Brooks
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by Glenn Brooks »

In 1948, my earliest memories as a toddler where when my grandma and her friend Francis Warner, took me to see the elephants at the St. Louis zoo and ride behind a miniature locomotive. Always remembered the elephants and the miniature train, but thought they were lost to the ages- a 1940’s childhood memory. Fast forward 50 years to 1995 or so, and somehow I heard about Alaska Live Steamers, out at the Wasilla airport. Pat Durant gave me a tour and I ended up spending three days riding various member trains out through the stunted trees of the northern forest and learning about steam locomotives. That prompted me to buy an old time, old home built, 1950’s coal fired 4-4-2 Atlantic train set over the phone, with four riding cars and a bunch of track panels located in Alabama. Flew down there, wrapped them all up in plastic and had the whole kit and caboodle air freighted to Hawaii as a ride concession at Pearl Harbor for the Fourth of July. Crazy thing to do, but it paid our freight cost. Been doing crazy things with miniature trains ever since.

Glenn
Moderator - Grand Scale Forum

Motive power : 1902 A.S.Campbell 4-4-0 American - 12 5/8" gauge, 1955 Ottaway 4-4-0 American 12" gauge

Ahaha, Retirement: the good life - drifting endlessly on a Sea of projects....
OddDuck
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by OddDuck »

It's all PRR5406's fault. Kinda. I'm a bit of a late starter to the hobby, but I've been interested in trains for a long time. My grandfather was an engineer for the northern division of the Bangor and Aroostook, so there's a family history. I had a Lionel set when I was younger. And, I almost wore out the section in Dad's set of Popular Mechanics encyclopedia that showed the plans for building a 14" gauge loco ( and I eventually quit bugging him to do it...) Never really got into HO or anything, as none of my friends were interested.
Fast forward twenty some odd years, and I was stumbling around trying to find a hobby that spoke to me. Through a roundabout route I started the whole foundry/blacksmithing thing, and loved it. I was in the process of making a kit for a hand cranked forge blower, and realized I needed a way to make gears. Hmm. Casting them didn't work for beans, and this was just before the explosion of 3d printing. I needed a mill to cut them after casting blanks. I know enough to be dangerous, you see.
A little while later, I saw an add on Craigslist for an Atlas mill for sale. Perfect! It's about what I had room (and budget) for. Went over to see it, and lo and behold this guy had a live steam locomotive in his garage!!! And planned on building a railroad in his backyard! Cool! And he was thinking, " This guy has a foundry!" It was like peanut butter and chocolate. And all downhill after that. So, now I have a railroad in my backyard, I've built two locos, three cars, one caboose, and have my own basket case steamer (to be completed, eventually).
Oh, and more projects than lifespan. And the projects keep adding.
Thanks Dick. It's (kinda) all your fault.
"If you took the bones out they wouldn't be crunchy!" -Monty Python's Flying Circus
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ChipsAhoy
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by ChipsAhoy »

Sometime in 1955, when I was three years old, my Parents left North Carolina and move the family to Alaska, where my dad began work as a track patrolman on the Alaska Railroad in town of Curry. We lived there until the hotel burned down. That began the end of the town and the family relocated to Chugiak Alaska. Dad continued to work on the railroad, and I spent a good part of my summers living there with him as the town was slowly dissambled and dozed into the Susitna River. Railroading was simply a part of my life during my upbringing and it stuck. There was very little exposure to locomotives in Curry as they just passed thru on their daily runs, my experience and facination was more with the Section Cars and Gas Cars, known as speeders to most of the world.
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PRR5406
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by PRR5406 »

Chocolate gives me indigestion, Pete. I'll gladly be the peanut butter half.
My father was an executive on the LIRR and I was born in Mineola's Nassau Hospital, facing the tracks. I saw the last of LIRR G5s and H-10s steam, and then the monsterous FM Diesels. I've been in love with steam all my 72 years, phasing through cardboard boxes, Lionels, the H-O gauge, and finally bitten by the live steam bug when I visited the well loved John Brace, in Cherryfield, Maine. My wife encouraged me to buy a Reading A5a, then I retired and constructed an ALCO C420 in adult education classes. I've constructed many cars and now Peter Grant (Odd Duck Foundry) and I are completing a CNR ALCO FA1. I have a railroad loop of approximately 1100 feet in my back yard and will put the final touches on it this fall.
"Dick, if not in this life, when?" - Carole Ann Glueck
"Always stopping my train, and risking my ankles, with American made, New Balance sneakers."
R Paul Carey
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by R Paul Carey »

Back in 1988, I visited an event at the Empire State Convention Center, where Frank deSantis had an exhibit which included a beautiful 3/4" scale live steam model of NYC&HR 999. I introduced myself, explaining that I was (at the time) General Manager of the road where the prototype was built and made it historic run and mentioned that I would be interested in purchasing the engine, as an office display, should he ever choose to sell it.

A few weeks later, Frank called and said yes, he would sell the engine. Several years later, anticipating retirement, I donated that engine to the Albany Institute of History and Art, in Frank's honor.

In the later 1990's I visited Frank at his home in Delanson, NY, where he mentioned "a problem", which turned out to be a basement assembly line literally jammed with 1-1/2" scale engines. He first asked, "would you consider buying one of my engines?", to which I said, "Sure!" Frank instantly followed up to ask "Could you buy TWO?"

Frank arranged to get me oriented on the care and maintenance of these engines (Southern 3783 and DL&W 988, both 4-4-0s) at the Adirondack Live Steamers, following which I retired and relocated to the rural Northern Neck of Virginia, where I live on six acres of forested waterfront land. The engines were kept in my climate-controlled workshop.

In the course of an environmental review of a waterfront improvement application, I was informed this forest was the last remaining "Old Growth" area on this particular Chesapeake tributary. Over the course of six years, I completed a 7-1/4" gauge line, to enable a ride through this truly remarkable forest.

The line is laid with scale rail, variously 80# and 115# (Culp, with tie plates), all fastened with square-cut spikes on cedar ties, ballasted with pea gravel and hand tamped. Curves are elevated, with spirals.

Five years ago, Engine 988 was donated with original DL&W erection plans to NPS Steamtown.

The entire project here, including rail, track spikes, track bolts, joint bars and several perfectly scaled freight cars - with accurate solid-bearing trucks, all scratch-built from original erection plans, became possible through the expert assistance of Carl Ulrich of Salem, WI.

This private railroad would never have come to exist, without the experience and assistance of Frank and Carl.
Gra2472
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Joined: Sat Jan 25, 2020 8:02 pm
Location: Monte Rio California

Re: How’d you get here?

Post by Gra2472 »

What awesome stories. It is amazing how similar and how different they are. Thanks for sharing guys.
7.5" Allen Mogul
3 x 7.5" West Valley Baldwin Westinghouse Electrics
The railroad is almost done.
G. Augustus
Monte Rio, Ca.
SCBryan
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Re: How’d you get here?

Post by SCBryan »

Like many others, I also have had a lifelong interest in trains. As a teenager, I also sent for catalogs from Little Engines and Winton (whose ads I had seen in magazines). They were neat but nothing came of it until about 25 years ago when Bill Pepper senior, a fellow member of a railroad history group here in Fort Wayne, invited me to a meet he was having at his track in Andrews, Indiana. I often wondered how silly I would feel being a full grown adult riding on "a little train". What a mistake! I was instantly hooked and had to have one. Not being a machinist, it took me five years to complete my 1/8 scale interurban. It has been great fun over the years. My Heisler is now nearing completion (hopefully by spring) and I look forward to many more years of enjoyment in this terrific hobby.

Steve
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