Old School Model Railroading


J

Jeremiaha Austin

North to the Future
I thought that I'd start this thread on old school model railroading for those interested in learning or telling about their experiences in this hobby.

When I started Model Railroading in 1972 if you wanted steam you had only a few choices. First there was brass (out of my price range), Rivarossi (also out of my price range), Mantua ready to run, and kits by Mantua, MDC and Bowser.

We used to have more aftermarket parts from Cary, Kemtron and others to build the prototype we were after. Building a kit gave you quality control over the process. The kits and parts were made in the USA; important for me. The kits were sturdy; you'll see many of the assembled kits, 40-50 years old at train shows in working condition. Finally, you were a model railroader and not a railroad modeler.

It's easy to buy a detailed RTR piece of equipment and put it on the layout. That's acceptable, however it makes the hobby today more one of collecting rather than building. As with a lot of things there is a trend within the hobby for dissatisfaction with this or that thing. The hobby is for enjoyment, a past time, entertainment, a learning tool.

I've built most of the Mantua kits at one time or another and they are fun. You can obtain good results if you follow the directions and work carefully.

If you are interested in the Mantua, Tyco, Bowser, MDC and other steam locomotive kits of this sort then check out http://yardbirdtrains.com/ . It is a good resource site for kit builders.

Best regards,
Brent Arritt
 
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As a teen in the 50's I had American Flyer. Another kid on the next street had them too and we'd save our allowance up for weeks and then head into Boston to the train shop where we'd carefully select what we needed and could afford. Scenery items back then were scarce as compared with now. I bought a roll of HO fiber tie strip and after some paint and reworking made a pretty good looking fence when stood up on edge. Plasticville buildings got cellophane window glass made from cigarette pack wrappers and shades cut from mom's ribbon box. We made buildings out of empty corn flakes boxes turned inside out then cut and glued back together with doors and windows drawn carefully with a ruler for a guide. Sticks and rocks from the back yard and the local woods became our main souce for scenery until one day my friend "planted" what later turned out to be poison ivy. His dad suggesting modeling a lake and filling it with calamine lotion. After that we did our scenery shopping in the back yards only.
 
I was about six when introduced to HO through my brother and his friend across the street. They built in our attic in a room designated for it. I remember the 'lil hustler with the rubber band drive as well as the early athearn F units which cost $6.98 each. Jon, the neighbor was encouraged by his father to go scratch and he was hand laying rails and doing plaster scenery on his own which was impressive for an 11 year old kid. Switch machines were largely Kemtron and seems expensive at $2.98 each. Varney was the junk kit of the day and most buildings were plasticville. Ambroid was doing the limited run cars in one of five thousand and my brother did get a few of them but never built them. I finished them some fifty years later.

But watching my neighbor with the plaster was my early inspiration. I do a lot of fresco plaster now. The paint justs runs so beautifully in wet plaster.
 
My obsession with model railroading started in the early 60s. My dad built a ho scale 4x8 that was put together every xmas, under the tree. A tyco sharknose diesel,silver with, a blue line weighed about 10 pds. Many different plasticville building kits adorned the layout.
I sat and watched that train go round and round for years. whenever i got some money i would walk to the nearest hobby shop some 20 min. away and purchase an athern mdc,atlas,bachmann or manthua car. box ,tank flat,piggy back,caboose or any available car i could afford.[CURRENTLY Have some 400 pcs,some have not been built yet] . When old enough i took over the basement with a small 4x8 layout. I built the houses,with the help of dad out of cardboard and balsa wood.NOW many years later i have a 11x13 layout that took over the garage. Dont care for dcc,love to operate through blocks, enjoy sound from steam engines.I still kitbash and use old school metods
DO NOT LIKe THE TERM "RTR" [unless on steam engines]. TO EACH HIS OWN
 
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I started in 1956 with a wind up Marx train. The bug bit me then. I graduated to AF because I didn't like the third rail on Lionel! I built my first HO kit at age 8, a Silver Streak SRR Car, that I still have.

I really am old school, I have always preferred steam over die-Esels. I have built every Bowser kit ever offered, and all the Mantua's, MDC's and The Locomotive Company kits. Even have the Arbour Allegheny under my belt. I hand lay as much track as possible, because if something goes wrong with it, it easily repaired. I work on all of my loco's, whether they are kits RTR's or Brass. I don't believe in sending a locomotive back to be fixed, as I feel that I can, due to my knowledge, I can fix the loco better and quicker than the maker can.
 
Jeremiaha Austin said:
...
We used to have more aftermarket parts from Cary, Kemtron and others to build the prototype we were after....
Brent Arritt
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Fortunately Brent, they are still available. I'm sure that Bowser, the current owners of Cal-Scale and Cary will drop,(if they haven't already) the Cary line. We also still have Kemtron, as they are owned by Precision Scale Company.

I just wish they would put their parts on line. They say they have over 10,000 parts, and that's too many to add to their website
 
My brother and I had an American Flyer layout with many of the Plasticville buildings. They were probably O scale, but we thought they looked good. This would have been about 1954-55 somewhere in there. The layout had a Pennsy K4 Pacific and around 8-10 cars.

I got heavy into HO when around 8-10 years old. Had a Tyco set and built many Athearn car kits for it. I have been involved in some type of modeling hobby my whole life. Built and flew free flight model airplanes, have been in R/C and Model Railroading off and on since I got out of the ARMY in 1972. Like most of the people who have spoken up in this thread, I like building models and I'm sorry if this might upset some; but, I don't care for the RTR stuff either and where it is taking hobbies in general. In R/C it is the same thing, hardly any of the guys in my club build their airplanes, most don't even assemble ARFs (Almost Ready To Fly) as they lack the simple skills to do so.

I realize there is nothing I can do to change this and kits will continue to become more and more scarce! The Modern American public just doesn't seem to grasp the pride and feeling of self-worth derived from working with their hands, anymore!

Oh well, like bfl721 said, to each his own!
 
NP2626 said:
My brother and I had an American Flyer layout with many of the Plasticville buildings. They were probably O scale, but we thought they looked good. This would have been about 1954-55 somewhere in there.
As I remember the Plasticville kits they were bi-scale. On the box it said something like For O and S scale . For me at least exact scale wasn't too important back then. I also used to build Revell and Renwall plastic model cars in 1/32 scale and put them here and there on the layout even though they were proportionally twice the size of American Flyer equip. One year for Christmas I got a snap together kit of the White House and it came with figures of all the presidents thus far up to Ike. That ended up on the layout also and the presidents became townspeople. Not sure what scale that was but the guys were even too big to fit in the 1/32 cars. Didn't matter though, it kept me happy. Picture John Quincy Adams standing outside the WPLA radio station next to a 1956 Ford convertible. :eek:
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NH Mike;259593As I remember the Plasticville kits they were bi-scale. On the box it said something like [I said:
For O and S scale [/I]. :eek:
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You may be right, it's too far back there and I was too young at that time to remember whether they were; or, weren't.
 
I started out in 1961 w/HO scale on a 4ft by 22 ft. train layout. I worked for a Toy & Hobby dist. in Hialeah, Fl. & I got all of the Trains & Structures 10% over cost. I originally started out w/Steam engines. I had two Rivarossi Cab Forwards, a lot of little tank engines & then when I had some patience at age 22 I started building engine kits.
We rented a 2 bedroom house in North Miami that had a big enclosed back porch & that was where I put the Train layout. I had been working on the layout everyday after work for about a year. Then I started a second job manageing a gas station at nite for the father in law & on the weekends. That curtailed me working on the layout for about 6 months. The gas station closed because the father in law retired. Then about 3 months later the Toy Job went bankrupt & the feds closed & locked the doors. About 2 months after that I had to find another place to live because the owner sold the house.
I didn't have another layout until I moved to Arcadia in 1971. The layout wasn't started until 1977. I had brought all of the trains w/me from Miami. They had been packed up for all those years w/all of the track & stuff & none of the engines ran.
Next layout was in 1982, 85, 88, 92, 98, 2002 & 2007.
Back then stuff was really cheap for me & I had a lot of choices. Rivarossi was the name brand, Plasticville was the leader in buildings & Revell made a lot of train stuff.
 
I started at the age of 5 in 1998 with good ole' power loc track and squeaky life-like engines on a 4x8. I picked up cars here and there, then I was introduced to Athearn and Model Railroader in the 5th grade for Christmas. The Athearn F unit ran so smoothly and was quiet! I think that's what really hooked me onto this hobby and I enjoy it everyday. Now I maintain a 100% kadee equipped, reboxx tuned fleet of rolling stock and Athearn/Bachmann Locomotives just waiting to build that layout.

-Jeff
 
Got a Lionel train set for my 3rd birthday in 1965. 1967 or 1968 my parents got me a Varney HO trainset, as 'it took up less space.' Summer of 1973, between 5th & 6th grade my Dad brought home some Model Railroader magazines with the idea that maybe I'd be interested in reading them. Got a subscription to MR in 1974; ended it about 1994. Built my first layout in the summer of 1975 or so. Redid it about 1985, then in the early 90's.

Bought a condo in 2001, with a storage unit for good sized layout. Considered N-scale at various times from about 1985 on. Stuck with HO, however.

First HO engine a Varney F unit in SP. Next was a AHM GG-1 bought at Two Guys in a January sale about 1973 for $21.99. Paid with it using my allowance, which amounted to about 25 cents a week, at that point. Next was the Tyco Birney trolley, followed by the Bachmann Amtrak Metroliner.

Was interested in electrics, as we used to take PRR/PC/Amtrak from Newark, NJ to Holmesburg Jct., to visit my Mom's Mother, pre-1977, occasionally. Also, EL Morristown line ran right behind the house, growing up.
 
I got started at about Age 8 in 96' on my grand fathers layout he built in the 70's and 80's everything on his layout was hand built. He had Rivarossi Steam and Athearn Diesel. I didnt get my first engine till I was 10 or 11. I was only 1 of 4 people allowed to run his layout out of about 15 cousins 14 aunts and uncles.IT was an impressive 10x20 in a room then it went out along 3 walls around his bar (loop on 1 end retracing back to the main layout) and back in. Its because of him I enjoy this hobby today and am currently building 2x4 Modules.
 
Got my start with my dad's Lionel stuff in the 50's and 60's, his first train set was from 1937. I used to assemble all of his Plasticville stuff. I even was allowed to make a few lichen trees. Paused for a few years for college, partying, and starting a family and re-entered the hobby in '85 or '86 with a Bachmann train set and the 4 x 8 plywood board. I bought John Armstrong's book about layout planning and quickly moved up to Athearn, Roundhouse and Walthers kits along with MRC and Atlas components. Built a 12' x 32' room on the backside of my barn to house the layout. Made the usual mistakes (for me at least); duckunders, hard to reach corners, s-curves, and too much track that made no sense. Refined and re-built twice and had a pretty decent set up for a while. The room itself was never meant to be too permanent as it wasn't insulated, wasn't dust-proof, and wasn't "varmint-proof". I live in the country surrounded by regularly plowed fields and lots of wildlife. I now have a dedicated 20' x 32' layout building where I am constructing my latest and last layout. I learned to build kits, scratchbuilt stuff, and can take locomotives apart and put back together in my sleep. I am grateful for this experience. I miss the older ways, miss the kits, but I am not totally against the RTR genre. While I will never buy an assembled structure, I have gotten some freight cars that I could never match the details, especially some of the recent tankers from Athearn. Quality is another thing though, but my experience over the years enables me to fix most ills. I am still old school in that I still run dc (for now unless I win a lottery), will always use code 100, and don't have a single piece of foam on my layout. Nothing against any of those improvements, they're just not for me. I always used KD's and have retro-fitted everything with metal wheels...but that may still be old school. Enough rambling for now!
willie
 
I'm with you Willie, for everything except DCC. I have a Digitrax Zephyr and a DT 300 Throttle that I can run two trains from. So, I have room for three operators via DCC. The layout is still blocked for DC and I still have a DC throttle, so in reality someone could be operating on DC, while three could operate on DCC. However, like you, I live in rural America and it's likely I may be the only operator, still the option is there.

Excepting for my Broadway Limited NYC Hudson, which I have kit smashed into the Northern Pacific's 2626, (O.K. it is shy a pair of drivers!) all my locomotives that I have converted to DCC have used inexpensive Digitrax decoders costing right around $20.00. I probably will install some sound equipped decoders in the near future, as I like the additional realism sound provides.

Still, I see nothing wrong with staying DC, if this fits your desires. However, I do like the simplicity DCC provides.
 
Getting Started

Like a lot of model railroaders I got my start in the hobby with a Christmas layout. It was a simple loop of track with two sidings. The equipment consisted of a Tyco Pennsylvania RR F7A, B&M Hopper, Reading Flat, Morrell Refer and Bopper Caboose. Dad built an Atlas signal tower, water tower and Revel station. I added hills using cotton balls with Life Like grass mats stapled over them. Lichen trees and bottle brush pine trees provided more scenery. A few Plastic-ville buildings were assembled and added. Various tunnels were tried using shoe boxes. The layout got a lot of play from it's start in 1964 to 1968.Time passed and train building went on hiatus until the early 1970's when I rediscovered the hobby as a teen.

Brent
 
Like many mrr's, my lifetime with trains started at age 5 when my Dad got me a Lionel set for Christmas. Then one day I was in a hobby shop and bought an issue of RMC - that started my foray into HO scale.

During my teen years I never had space for a layout of my own, so I joined a club (the BSME) and that provided me with a place to run my trains, as well as companionship with other mrr's. My favorite road was the B&O, and since Athearn didn't produce any models of their most common 2nd generation diesel engines, I wound up kitbashing a pair of GP40's, GP38's, and SD40's from those bare black Athearn shells that were available in the early 1970s. I also modified the GP7 shells to replace the molded-on winterization hatch with a regular fan cover. From age 18 thru 33, I drifted away from mrr.

When I returned to the hobby in 1988, I stopped buying the Athearn 'fat-hood' geeps because Front Range had them with correct-with hoods. I built my very first layout in 1990, and a few more after that. I started modeling the steel industry in 1996 when Walthers introduced their first series of steel mill kits. I felt compelled to learn how to scratchbuild structure models since nobody produced kits for every type of structure unique to steel mills.

When I moved to my current home in 2000 I discovered track-planning software, and have used that to design my track plans ever since - after deciding on my givins & druthers. I use it mostly to see if I can fit wide-enough radius curves in my available space. When I finally started using DCC, I discovered I could model a locomotive terminal - not easy to do with a DC block-controlled layout as I had learned the hard way earlier!
 
Atlas Turnout Kit circa 1955

At our club train show in Bowling Green Kentucky I spotted an Atlas turnout kit; 1955 vintage. It was brass, the points and frogs were neatly soldered together parts, with 4 9" pieces of rail, copper rail clips (to attach the rail to the sleepers), a neatly laid out section of fiber ties, and detailed instructions. I remember seeing these in hobby shops in the 1960's. I thought about buying it for old times sake, but didn't.

Has any one out there assembled one of these? What challenges did you encounter? What did you learn from assembling the kit?

Best regards,
Brent
 
Jeremiaha Austin said:
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Has any one out there assembled one of these? What challenges did you encounter? What did you learn from assembling the kit?

Best regards,
Brent
Click to expand...

On my previous layout in Mobile, in the 70's and 80's, I had several. The only difference in my was I eliminated the fiber ties. I used Campbell's profile ties as that was what was on the rest of the layout. The construction was easy, as I have always hand laided as much track as possible. If you know how to handlay and build your own turnouts, these are a piece of cake. They performed absolutely beautifully, and never gave me any trouble at all. I kinda wish I still had them. They would look great in a display case. When I tore down that layout because I needed the room, they got boxed up. Somehow over the years that box got crushed and the turnouts were destroyed.
 
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