1. "Cascades" (circa 1977), HO Scale
Like almost all kids, my first model railroad layout was HO scale and built upon a simple 4 x 8 piece of plywood stuck on a table out in my parents' garage. Rolling stock was almost entirely Tyco, the now gone but once common cheaply made (but affordable) brand in America. The layout was a simple oval and "scenery" was my Dad cutting off some branches from a bush to stick on the plywood. This first set was the beginning of my love affair with the Burlington Northern railroad, its predecessors, and its descendants. My set had a Burlington Northern EMD GP20 locomotive that was barely prototypical (the BN livery certainly wasn't). The piggyback cars with 20 foot Burlington Northern trailers were my favorite and an early hint of my future love of all things intermodal. My Dad later bought me some Athearn Blue Box F units from Burlington Northern and some Rivarossi BN passenger cars.
As an aside, you have to understand that growing up where I did in California, being a Burlington Northern fan was an oddity. In the late 1970s, BN only had California trackage in the far northern part of the state. In my part of California, nearly every railfan--including my father--nearly worshipped the Southern Pacific. But I never had much liking for Espee then and only a bit more now later in life.
Other than a few Tyco structures such as a piggyback car unloading ramp, this layout never got that far. At age 6, I knew enough that BN didn't run much in California so I set this layout vaguely somewhere in the "Cascades."
2. "Aurora, Illinois" (circa 1982-83), HO Scale
By 1983, my family had taken two cross-country Amtrak train trips: first on the San Francisco Zephyr and then its successor, the reborn California Zephyr. These trips reignited my love of trains and my desire to give an HO scale layout a second try.
The original 4 x 8 plywood board was long gone so we got another one. The track plan was yet another oval though there may have been a turnout and a siding. With my travels through Illinois in my mind, my desire was to set this layout in Aurora, Illinois, then home to both an Amtrak station and the terminus of the Burlington Northern's Chicago commute service. I loved passenger trains and Aurora was something of a Burlington Northern paradise to me.
Added to the earlier rolling stock was mostly Bachmann and some Athearn Blue Box. Frustratingly, Christmas presents from relatives and my father were strictly unprototypical (one gift was a 1950s era Canadian National F unit that had nothing to do with 1983 Aurora). My dreams of modern Aurora were frustrated by the fact that the model railroad manufacturers were not offering the locomotives and rolling stock that fit my protoype or were not offering them in my almost non-existent budget. BN "Commutes" with E9s pulling Budd double-deck cars? Nope. Try a Life-Life RTA (hey, at least it was Chicago area) pulling some Bachmann Amfleet cars. But in some ways, as a kid, filling in with your imagination was not a bad thing.
Other than some Bachmann HO scale stations, there were no other structures and no scenery whatsoever--this time Dad was not allowed to cut branches.
My dream rolling stock purchase (funded by my parents) were brand new Con-Cor Amtrak Superliner I cars like we had traveled in cross-country. I had huge expectations for these cars, which I could pull with a Bachmann Amtrak F40PH locomotive.
Only these cars were a huge disappointment. Poorly made, you had to assemble them on their trucks, which wobbled terribly. The local hobby store recommended weighting them down but even that didn't help. Derailments, even on a simple oval, were common.
This disappointment was a major factor in killing my interest in the project. I learned a valuable lesson that if you get your heart set on some kind of model railroading locomotive or rolling stock, you'd better make sure it runs well or you're going to be in for trouble.
3. "Essex, Illinois" (1986-1987 prototype: Galesburg, IL), N Scale
To my father's disappointment that all the past HO scale rolling stock in boxes in our garage continued to rot, I decided as a teenager that my next effort would be in N scale. I think the only reason was that I had seen Japan's KATO would be releasing EMD's most current road switcher, the GP50 in N scale.
This next layout would be a joint effort with my friend John, who had all the carpentry skills I did not. This layout was back in my parents' garage but would feature two 4 x 8 pieces of plywood for an 8 x 8 table. John was instrumental in building a proper wooden table with all the necessary struts and supports. We were aided in this by some wood from pallets we "liberated" from behind a local home improvement store (it was out amongst the garbage so maybe they indeed didn't want it--at least that's what we told ourselves).
John taught me soldering and we wired the various segments. We used flextrack and cork roadbed. So you can already see this effort was far ahead of my childhood ones.
Knowing Chicago METRA rolling stock was unavailable in 1987, I used Galesburg, Illinois, as an inspiration. But as I would not slavishly model that area (and remember, this was pre-Internet so it was near impossible to get an idea of what Galesburg was like from Google Maps) I named the main city "Essex" and labeled other towns nearby after World War Two U.S. Navy aircraft carriers.
Galesburg was interesting to me not so much for modeling the actual city but for the fact that Burlington Northern and Santa Fe crisscrossed each other in this city. The California Zephyr and Illinois Zephyr stopped at one station on the BN line, while the Southwest Chief stopped at another on the Santa Fe line. On my layout, all Amtrak trains stopped at one station--which actually presaged the situation that exists in real-life Galesburg today.
The track plan was freelanced and consisted of a double track oval (more on that in a second) that fed into a multi-track passenger yard at Essex Station. This was more inspired by my many visits to San Jose Amtrak Station with my father than any Illinois prototype.
But this layout would have a fatal flaw. The oval was not complete--it terminated in the yard with stub tracks. My father and John argued vehemently against this but I would not be swayed. At 16, I didn't understand all the model railroad reasons for derailments but I knew curves did not help and I wanted to minimize them at all costs. I figured Con-Cor's N scale Superliners had a better chance of staying on track if they only had three curves to round--even if that meant "Giant Hand Action" was needed to turn them around.
John complained--rightly--about this poor track planning so much that I agreed to add an extremely tight radius track on track #1 at the station which fed into the rest of the oval. The only problem was that almost anything other than a solitary locomotive would derail (again, like a medieval doctor, I knew about the disease of derailments but not all their root causes).
The Con-Cor N scale Superliners were slightly better built than their HO scale forebears. I mostly bought covered grain hoppers as freight rolling stock (grain=Illinois, get it?). I even was able to get a set of BN Impac cars that were the forerunners of today's spine cars.
My dream acquisition came one Christmas when I got two KATO GP50s: one BN and one ATSF. To my chagrin, KATO did not initially release the BN GP50 Tiger Stripe livery which I love (I seem to be one of the few who does) but in the regular livery that the ex-Frisco units were painted in. It was a huge ask of my parents to pay what was probably $100 for both units so the idea of a second running mate for both was out of the question.
I had to mostly make do with Bachmann SD40-2s. My Life-Life Amtrak F40PHs were key to my plans but were so poorly made that the engines in them died after almost no run time. I bought Bachmann F units at the local toy store, stripped their shells, and put on the F40PH shell. Voila! Never mind this Frankenstein-like creation had no ditch plow, they did run.
I had some Bachmann buildings and even made an overpass out of some balsa wood and plastic bridge girders. I had just begun to do some landscaping when I lost interest. By this time, John had discovered girls and had long since stopped helping. I was now tiring of the cold winters in the unheated garage and the fact I could not run any trains in a circle. The idea of "operations" in model railroading had yet to occur to me. I could run a train all the way around once and then had to pick up the locomotives and put them on the other end. No fun.
The tables were so well built that my parents used them to put stuff on for many years. Yet when they used my help to finally take them down, it did feel like something had died.
4. Naperville, Illinois, 2005-2007, HO Scale
In a classic case of Freudian regression, my interest in trains was reignited as an adult in late 2004. I wanted to build a layout and this time returned to HO Scale. Naperville had replaced Aurora as Amtrak's stop in suburban Chicagoland so that had to be my new setting. Burlington Northern was no more--now merged with my N scale partner of Santa Fe to form the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway. My BN allegiance carried over to the new railroad.
I had the crazy idea of replicating Naperville as much as I could. I researched photos online and even took many photos of the METRA/Amtrak station during a 2005 visit. Yet to do it properly would require a ton of time, modeling ability, patience, and money. I only had the latter in regular supply.
The site was again my parents' garage, which of course was problematic as it was not my house. I didn't want to bother with bench building so I invested in several long 2 x 8 folding tables to form a 10 x 8 monster. I was frustrated in finding extruded foam insulation in California so I had to settle for the cheaper type of foam board that can be easily found here. I taped this board down to the tables with duct tape. As klugey as that reads, it did hold together!
I was able to create three oval tracks to replicate the famous "Racetrack" that runs from Chicago to Aurora. But again, "operations" was not a word in my vocabulary. I tried to tack on some sidings but they were too short and the only "industry" was a freight transfer facility.
I initially used Atlas track with its rather fake-looking plastic roadbed. I did try to ballast it but the Atlas turnouts were totally junk. The control switches would soon break and the turnouts would not hold their position, resulting in derailments.
I junked all the Atlas track for KATO Unitrack. It was a huge expense but as my Dad said, you get what you pay for.
Now I could run very long intermodal container trains and Walthers HO scale Amtrak Superliners (A short note--Walthers' various runs of HO scale Superliners have been some of the best running rolling stock I have ever had). Yet decoupling was a problem as the garage floor was not level.
The biggest problem with the effort was that as you may imagine, while running trains in circles impresses family, friends, and neighbors, it gets boring after five minutes. The fact that the garage was not my house was another problem. I had to dismantle it but my father got the gift of all those tables, which were soon buried in his junk.
5. "Coyote Hills, California" (prototype: Fullerton, California) 2007-2010, HO Scale
In my apartment, I decided to continue on with a shelf layout in my room. I should have taken the time and used leveling tools and the like to build even segments. But considering I had a roommate and no garage, I ended up with a kluged-set of quickly built tables (that is, plywood with legs held together with metal brackets) and some bridge segments that essentially kept me a prisoner in my room.
Cork layers and latex caulk could only fix uneven segments so much that I eventually recoupled almost all of my rolling stock with Kadee #118 metal shelf couplers that would allow for more up-and-down give.
The layout setting was a big paradigm shift. I decided to leave Burlington Northern home rails for a Southern California-setting loosely based on Fullerton, California. The reason for this was that METRA BNSF rolling stock was not available in HO scale but I had invested in a $1600 four-car Overland brass set of Amtrak California Surfliners perfect for Southern California. My constructed tables didn't leave room for triple track like the real Fullerton so I decided to create a fictional area, picking "Coyote Hills" as that is the name of a district in Fullerton.
The layout had an Amtrak station (Walthers' Santa Fe station kit) and a stub yard. In fact, with all my ovals-to-nowhere experience, I went overboard. I built a cement factory from a Walthers kit, bought a background grain elevator off Ebay, and purchased Herpa snap-together kits for a cold storage warehouse. Any open area became fodder for spaghetti-like track. Run-throughs? Everything worked but Auto Maxs and Autoracks. I also had industries to switch.
I also made huge gains landscaping the layout. I had an orange tree orchard as a nod to Orange County. The yard was ballasted in between the tracks. A bridge segment out in the "desert" looked parched and had some sage brush-type foliage (expensive German-made accessories).
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| A scene from this layout that I staged for a Christmas 2009 email to family and friends. |
There was just one big problem with this layout. HO Scale was just too big for my room. It wasn't that the trains didn't run well--I had too much rolling stock and it was all in Rubbermaid-style bins. Getting it out of bins and back in was a hassle. I did built a short staging yard in a hallway that led to my bathroom but trains consistently derailed once they reached the main segment for reasons I could never decipher.
I could leave some of my rolling stock out on the tables. That worked so long as my roommates cat's didn't get into my room through partially closed doors!
Overall, despite its problems, it was my most sophisticated and most complete effort to date. Visitors remarked on how great it was looking.
By now, however, I knew I had made a huge mistake in not going with N scale again. But I had spent (and wasted on some rolling stock and badly finished structure kits) thousands of dollars and the idea of converting just seemed too much.
My roommate and I parted company and I had to move to a smaller studio. But the idea of doing a layout never quite died. I just knew that HO scale was probably not in the cards.
One day, I decided to start selling off my HO scale rolling stock and using that money and other money to begin buying N scale locomotives, rolling stock, and structures. That is now leading to my new layout, which I will be blogging about here.
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