I know I have seen that before but I don't remember, at all, who made it. I remember it because I thought the roof was unusual with the shallow clerestory on it. Doug
View attachment 26947 View attachment 26948 View attachment 26949 View attachment 26950 [/QUOTE FA-1's were quite popular by then I see. 4 different manufacturers on one page. Back then I made about $5 a week from my newspaper route, so I would treat myself to a new item maybe every other month from the local Woolworths, where there was always an AHM sale going on. Of course $5 was an average since not every one paid every week. Collecting was the worst part. You'd go to someone's home, you could hear the TV, but they wouldn't answer the door cause they knew when I came collecting every week. There were several times I had to borrow from Mom to cover the shortage. Most of the time it worked out, but there was always a customer or two I would have to cut off after they got four weeks behind. A heck of a way for a teenager to learn how to run a business. I don't have anything left of my first endeavor into N scale, which was in 1970. It sat in a box after my parents split up and we'd moved a couple of times. After I left for Navy boot camp, my stepfather sold it all for $20 (there was probably about $100 worth), plus my record collection and 1/25 scale truck models. I never got any of the proceeds. I started back in N scale in 1984 when I bought my first house. I have my Concor and Walthers catalogs from that year. I should probably look them over, as I suspect what was available wasn't all that different from 1970, with the exception of Micro Trains, and by that time Kato was starting to manufacture locos for Atlas and Con-cor. Now look at what is being made in N scale. We've come a long way, baby!
It's been decades since I've looked these slides and it's been fun. I checked the date on this one and it was one of several I took in March of 1980 before I began demolition of the layout prior to my move away from home to start my career. Forty years later living in three different states and I haven't had a basement since ......
Hardcoaler, an Arnold Rapido catalog I have from 70/71 identifies that station as their 0643 Freight Shed kit with Skylight. Original price $2! Might be a hard one to find now.
Thanks Nick - you have a sharp eye! Very cool. I might have that Arnold catalog and will have to dig it out.
Well, that shows the state of my memory, these days. It's in my '72-'73, '77-'78, and '79-'80 Rapido catalogs, too, all of which I have looked through fairly recently. They changed the name of it to "Storage Shed Kit" in the later two. Doug
I remember when a layout like that was the most awesome thing I had ever seen! I would have dreamed of being a tiny person going inside that station and what it must have been like. I remember the puffy balls of "Life Like" bright green dyed lychens, and sawdust to represent green grass and bushes, to make fantastic landscaping. I remember the foam beadboard mountains with a tunnel the train could go through representing the Stampede Pass tunnel, and watching trains go through the mountain pass. And I remember the AHM yellow transformer that powered the trains that had that soothing hum as it's buzz powered the whole empire, with 6 lighted buildings, and 3 street lights, dreaming of someday getting a Model Power flashing crossing grade.
Whether we want to admit it or not...I still think we all do that...even if its only for a second or two. JS
I agree so much with your thoughts y'all and it's a bit of a shame that we eventually lose our childhood imaginations that so wonderfully filled the voids on our early model railroads. As I grew up, my failure to achieve the modeling excellence I saw in magazines served to erode my happiness with the hobby, as my skills never came close to matching what I saw. That's what I like about TrainBoard, showing the hobby as it exists in the real world, with its welcome diversity of scales, skills and interests. Winding the clock back almost 50 years to 1971 finds my layout built on our Lionel train table. Dig those Revell Rapido power packs and the frugal adaptation of using Lionel switch controllers on my Rapido switches.
My first N scale layout. double main thru a tunnel on a 32" HCD set on top of our dresser. NO...the wife wasnt really happy. But look where her and I are now !
