Bought some Atlas track and an ATSF caboose in '99. First locomotive was a C&O E8 #ed 4021. Got out of the hobby in '01(after buying a Chessie System set and messing around with it for awhile),got back into the hobby in '05 after I started working and would have the money to spend on model railroading.
I inherited an Auroura Postage Stamp set from my grandmother in the 60s. Still have an NH boxcar, B & O caboose, transformer, and the melted shell of the B & O F unit. A cheapy Bachman set headed by a Prairie started my 1st layout in the early 80s. The Prairie is still running on my Dads layout. At that time I got my 1st "quality" locos, an NYC Con-Cor PA and an NYC Atlas RS-3 for the unheard of sum of $60 for the PA and $50 something for the RS. The RS is long gone but I picked up 2 of the same vintage on the bay recently for $40 for both. The PA is still running flawlessly at my Dads. I'd always assumed the Auroura set was my Dads but only found out this year that my grandmother had bought it for herself and that was likely the inspiration for my Dad telling me to come teardown the Lionel layout I was building for him because he wanted to switch to N.
Bachmann F7 trainset I bought for my son. Followed by an Atlas RS11. The difference in operation was like night and day. Another RS11 followed by 3 RS1's and then I hit the mother lode. Found a hobby store in a small town in Western PA that was going out of business and had a sale on. Two Atlas GP35's, two Kato U30C's and 2 Atlas U25B's later I thought I was set. Then I joined an Ntrak club which only told me I didn't have nearly the amount of rolling stock that a good Ntrakker should. So how bad did it get? Well, after church on Sunday we met a family we knew and their son asked me if he could have my trains when I die. Anyone know how big of a turn radius will sit inside a coffin?
Long time ago; don't remember when... If you count "Treble O", it was a Lone Star 0-8-0, I think. Rubber band drive in the tender. Plus some "loose pieces", all at a long gone shop in Niagara Falls. Not a great memory, but I still have several of them somewhere, including a crane car that reminded me of my origional tinplate American Flyer one... After that, I got 2 Atlas E-8 sets for Christmas when they came out; from Murphy's, or maybe Twin Fair or "Two Guys"? One in Pennsy, one B&O- passenger and freight. Then an Aurora "Postage Stamp" set- Pennsy passenger with F-units (dummy B). I drifted off after those days, & came back eventually with MiniTrix Pennsy steam... JimR.
CZ 1st For many years I had always said that when I retired I'd build a train room and start in N scale. Later, I inherited my Dads old wind up tin stuff, some electric O scale stuff and quite a bit of HO stuff. But having seen a good N scale layout years earlier, I had always wanted one. Well the Xmas before I retired, my children bought me Kato's California Zephyr. What a great start into N scale. It was just the thing to get me over the initial hurdle into model railroading. Of course then I had to make the investment in the Kato A+B+B WP F3's in order to pull it. And then there was the need to get some freight, some steam and some logging stuff etc. etc. blah blah blah........ I even travelled half way around the world to meet Chuck Ciaccio and visit his Feather River Train Shop in San Rafael CA to buy some more gear. :thumbs_up: Now that event is worthy of a thread of its own.
I received for my 8th Birthday the Arnold Rapido Western Pacific 0-6-0 set. It had the Loc(of course) 2 cars and a caboose. The set came with a circle of track, but Pops bought some straights to give me an oval on my desk top. It was pretty cool. Wolf
1975 Life Like trainset - CP SD 45 ( foobie alert !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) with a few cars and a ATSF caboose..... man were they thinkin there !
A Parkway GN stock car in bright red - still have the car and box. shortly after that, I got an MRC set with an RSD-15 in B&O, a State of Maine box car, a B&O hopper, a Shell tank car, and a B&O caboose. Still have them all.
1996 Kato SD40 CN #5001 (why start with anything less...) I did pay 198.00 SwissFrancs for this engine (US $182 nowadays), it was my first but it was also the only one I did buy in Switzerland, after that there was Palatine Hobby Ltd. in Chicago (Leon Waldacks hobby shop back then) and eBay...
It was 1968 and I became the proud owner of very generic 0-6-0 tank engine and four cars (tank, box, stock car and caboose). 40 years later and I still have all of them and most of that 9 year old boy as well. The trains run fine but as for me...:tb-biggrin:
The first one I bought as an adult getting sereous about model railroading was a Kato GP30 SSW(Cotton Belt). I purchased it from Arnies in Westminister in 1991or1992. I recentl was able to get it running again as TCS came out with the CN decoders. It runs a bit loud but out pulls everything else on the layout.:tb-biggrin:
About 10 years ago, I visited a modeltrain show with my wife. I had HO equipment from my youth, but hadn't done anything with it for years. The show refired my love for modeltrains and at the end of the day I wanted a layout again, but we had no room for the HO stuff. My wife convinced me to buy a starters set in N scale, so we went home with a Roco set, including a German diesel and some freight cars. I still have the diesel somewhere.
My first was a Minitrix Pennsy steam engine, K-4 i think in the early 70's. It was such a bad runner i went to O scale for awhile and didn't return to N scale till 2004. Now i am here to stay and about to start building a new layout. Dave
In 1985, I stumbled over an Atlas GP9 and a few cars in a second-hand shop. They had hundreds of Atlas cars and I invested heavily and bought 100+ of them. ($ 2.- each!) The GP9 doesn't exist any more, it never ran well. The cars have been repainted, modified an retrucked and are all on my layout. It seems that the second-hand shop got the leftover inventory from Roco after they quit making models for Atlas. Michael
It depends whether you are talking German or American trains My first N-scale engine was a BR75 Arnold steamer, a great-looking engine which runs lousy. This was 1986. Two years later I got my first American engine, a Kato RS3 in GN livery. In 1991 I bought my first MTL cars, and after this I was addicted to US models Still am....
