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 Posted - November 20 2009 : 07:53:41 AM
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Anybody got pics or memories of thier first layout? I do! It was a full sheet of plywood with the top rattle canned green, black, and blue. Had a Life-Like set from toys-r-us. It was while it lasted. Had a scrap piece of 1X2 to represent a loading dock and a cattle pen. Long gone now!!
" Heck with counting 'em rivets, TRAINS ARE FOR FUN! Not called the Mad Scientist for nothing either!"
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Posted - November 20 2009 : 09:22:14 AM
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Mine was a Lionel 027 gauge Loads of fun but Would you believe I still have the board it went on? I even used it for my Bachman HO train later 027 long gone now  Still got the HO train 
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Posted - November 20 2009 : 3:30:25 PM
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| My first was a Life-Like set from the Christmas catalog. I had it set up on a 4x8 on a tabletop. There were two tracks: a figure 8 and a smaller circle. The locos were a D&H GP38 and a UP 0-4-0. It was cheesy--bright green grass paper, styrofoam mountain--but a lot of fun. I think I've got some pics somewhere, but it would take awhile to find them.
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Posted - November 20 2009 : 8:11:42 PM
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My first was an American Flyer S gauge around 1960. Still have it and the box...
Mike
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Posted - November 20 2009 : 8:23:43 PM
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Here is a picture from a long time ago....my first layout wasn't HO.
This was my bedroom in the house I grew up in...my mom hated that layout because it took up so much room in the bedroom...she was happy when I got married in 1986,because that was the first thing she wanted out.
I had to hustle a lot of newspapers to get to this point but stuff was cheap in the 70s
BT
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Posted - November 20 2009 : 11:23:51 PM
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Mine was on a piece of Homasote Dad used for a county map...I had kitty litter ballast and plaster scenery died with diluted acrylic paints. My scale lumber was the veneer peeled off of old furniture in the basement...my first engines, an AHM 4-4-0 "Genoa", a Tyco 0-4-0 shifter and an AHM 0-8-0 IHB switcher. Don't recall ever seeing any prototype photos of engine houses accessible by trestle but there was aty least one model of one...
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Posted - November 21 2009 : 1:27:14 PM
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Tyco Rock Island for Christmas in 1976 - "Made in USA" stamped on the bottom of all the cars. Jell-O is my favorite. Picked up a few at yard sales including the Pennsylvania caboose with floodlight car shortly thereafter, still have all of them. Ran it on the floor as often as I could put it together. In the 90s I soldered a bunch of track together, ran it on a 4x8 sheet of plywood for several years.
I'm curious - I never see "Made in USA" posts about Tyco stuff. What years did they do that? I've got other Tyco that is apparently both older and newer than mine - and they all say Hong Kong. When was the USA stuff produced?
Rus
Starting my Tyco and other favorites collection over again after 37 years.
My still in progress list of inventory and wantlist: tyconut.com
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Posted - December 31 2009 : 08:20:37 AM
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My first layout was a Tyco set that we mounted to 4 x 6 plywood, and then mounted it to a frame on the wall in my bedroom. The track was nailed down, but everything else had to be removed . when ever I was tired of playing with it, we would just fold it up on to the wall and it was out of the way. I still have my first set , with each car still in their original brown boxes. Had lots of fun over the years with that arrangement.
Russell
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Posted - January 03 2010 : 5:01:51 PM
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I finally got around to scanning a few of the pictures in of my first layout. Unfortunately most of them aren't worth showing since little old me who was working the camera back then didn't know a thing about proper lighting 
Overview shot, the dark yellowish blob near the front is my LL Chessie F7 which is still out & about today. You can also see the two parking sidings where the coal tipple was. My Tyco C630 still in ICG colors and Durgano GP20 are on standby. This pic was also taken before we added another elevated O-gauge line the the Lionel my Aunt gave me.
We had a little park near the front of the layout (the tin foil was water lol) that changed a little each year. One year we stuck a small statue of the Virgin Mary my grandmother had there. Actually looked pretty cool.
Going from the front storage tracks to the rear of the layout.
You can see the elevated line now with my Lionel making passes (the one on the outer loop was my parents and it went with my brother). Also the EXTREMELY small circle in the middle of the layout. Built totally for my 0-4-0 Lima and it loved it lol. Finally a siding near the rear which sole purpose was so we could get EVERY piece of rolling stock onto the layout. Buildings were a mix of O-scale and HO stuff, it was a xmas layout what did you expect Everything ran great though, my Dad put cork under all of the HO trackage and they always ran smooth.
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Posted - January 03 2010 : 11:26:13 PM
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| My first layout was a 4X8 with an extention 3X3 feet on the side at one end. It was a nice plywood table my Dad had built for me sitting on 3 foot tall saw horses. Tyco trains & track around the outer edge running on separate tracks going opposite directions with a side track each. Also a Tyco slocar track that was mostly inside of the train tracks other than the 3X3 section that was added so I could add 2 3 inch Road & Rail train/slot car crossings. I had 2 crash intersection pieces for the slot cars only. Several LifeLike buildems buildings and a few lighted light poles on the scene. Most Tyco train car pieces along with 4 LifeLike & and a few AHM. Walt
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Posted - January 06 2010 : 1:16:06 PM
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Our first layout was made from homasote that was 5" x 9' I believe which is the size of a ping pong table. Dad had this custom made, with a shelf for the power packs, and we usually only had it upstairs at Christmas and it would hold the tree as well as a loop of O27 Lionel from a 671 steam turbine set and later on an Athearn F unit and loop. We would move it to the basement where it would have HO and an Aurora slot car set. The scenery was comprised of a few houses and such. It got a good amount of use from the mid 60s to the very early 70s. It still exists in the basement of my parents home and being a pack rat, I'd like to bring it to my home when I have a proper sized vehicle to do so.
Alco Fan
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 Posted - January 07 2010 : 11:53:43 PM
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Sadly, there are only 1 or 2 pics of my childhood layout. I put my hand on one of the pics about 4 or 5 years ago, and cannot find it now. I do recall the photo was from an old Kodak Brownie camera, and the print was semi-glossy. I believe my Aunt took the pic sometime between 1978 and 1979, and finally bequeathed a stack of pics to me, of which the layout pic originated from. Before that, I never had a pic of my childhood layout, even with my older sister having a Polaroid "One Step" Instamatic Camera (of which I wasted untold amounts of film). I do regret not snapping a few pics of it.
I do remember plenty about my layout...so much so, in fact, that I have been able to reclaim it all from eBay and other various sources over a period of years. All of it is in 3 or 4 boxes.
Yeah, it is nostalgic.
So...on with the tale!
Sometime in late November of '77 (just before Thanksgiving), my father began locking the door to the "Toy Room" in my childhood home. Consequently, right around the time that door began locking, my father and a relative brought in two old-school (and well-worn) solid oak student tables from a recently-decomissioned elementary school in our hometown. These tables had 3 or 4 cubbies underneath for textbooks and supplies, and were no taller than thirty inches, tops. I thought, "Huh. Weird. Why are we getting two old oak tables?"
And what's worse..."Why are they going into my play area?" My curiosity was now piqued.
Our home was a non-descript one-story all brick rancher, 3/2/1, and was either a White Catalog Home, or one of the last Sears Catalog Homes to be shipped by rail in the late '50's. The Toy Room room actually began life as a one-car carport, and was enclosed and finished shortly after the home was completed by my father (he built the house with a friend of his over a period of 6 months in '58, as time after work, weather, extra volunteer labor and funds allowed). This room was designated for me and my sister, and all of our junk was in it. Now, without warning, it was LOCKED. As a seven year-old, I was confused, to say the least, but also curious.
I could hear him working feverishly on something in the evenings after supper and the evening news...but I was not allowed to go in. He even locked it while he was in there working. Again, weirdness for a seven year-old.
Weeks went by, and my curiosity waned. Dad still locked himself away, with taps here, drilling there, sawing here, etc.
Christmas morning '77 finally came, and as usual, there was quite a spread under the tree. Once we were finished opening gifts, and saw what Santa had brought, my father said, "One minute, I think Santa has made a stop in the Toy Room, let's check to be sure."
He unlocked the door, and my jaw dropped. It just dropped.
Santa outdid himself in '77!
Against one of the walls in the Toy Room was a 4ft. x13ft. layout, with 3 big ovals, one siding, and a six-track fiddle yard crammed with rolling stock. It was complete, with buildings and rolling stock. Santa met that deadline!
I will NEVER, EVER forget four distinct sensations about that early morning Christmas inaugural run; the way the locomotives' headlights traced around the walls and room in the pitch blackness, the way the wheels clickety-clacked around the track, the way the Bedford Blinking Water Tower, Freight Stations, Factory, Passenger Station and Union 76 Service Station cast a warm, soft glow within the small HO railroad town, and the wicked smell of ozone eminating from THREE Tyco GP-20's high-ballin' it around those ovals.
Over the years, whenever I would visit home, I would ask my Dad questions about about the layout. He would tell me all he could remember, as family obligations, stress and just the passing of time have a way of clouding a man's mind.
When I drove home to help my parents recover from Hurricane Katrina (6ft. of salt water and sludge plowing through a home with 8ft. ceilings), I found the original Tyco 1977 catalog that came out of one of the '77 Chattanooga GP-20 sets from Christmas '77, along with "OOPS! Has Something Gone Wrong?" (They knew they peddled JUNK, LOL) and a few sheets of instructions, soggy at the bottom of a 4 drawer file cabinet in my Dad's shed.
Man, those memories came flooding back, this time WITHOUT the 29ft. storm surge, mud from Biloxi Bay and the Gulf of Mexico in tow.
In the scheme of things, details about a childhood layout is just esoteric minutae, lost on all but the most die-hard children at heart...but it is that sentimental yearning of simpler times, I suppose, that tends to heal, and fill voids in our lives, where other things (or people) cannot.
As a humorous aside, my father attempted to convince ('splain, LOL) my mother that the trains were "for the kids only," buit she wasn't buying ANY of it once she saw the completed layout Christmas morning. From my perspective now, My father simply went NUTS that Christmas of '77, just as I've done admittedly over the years, picking this stuff up again.
...But it was a GOOD kind of NUTS, I think. Not Dreyfuss-Close Encounters-mashed potatoes-nuts, but nuts, nonetheless.
OK...no model numbers/catalog numbers, as it takes up way too much time, and this is just for fun/nostalgia.
Here is what I remember:
A 4x13 triple oval, all Atlas brass track, with one passing siding on the inside.
There was a six-tiered fiddle yard filled with rolling stock and each staging track had its own caboose.
The outer most oval (my run of track) had a good ten-plus feet of straightaway mainline, which was impressive from a seven year-olds' perspective. I would run one of the Chatt consists wide-open as often as I could get away with (Dad disapporoved of high-ballin').
My father drilled about 10 holes into the ends of the layout, and inserted 1/2 wood dowels to keep the trains on the layout. Unfortunately (and rather strange), we did not have any operating accessories, save for the Billboard Whistles from the Chatt sets, nor did we ever acquire most of the nifty billboard cars.
It's almost as if my dad made a last-minute decision to do the layout, and bought as much stuff as he could grab from K Mart, JC Penney's and Sears before the Christmas sales ran out. His reasoning for THREE Chatt sets was : Me, him & my sister. My mom wasn't inclined to hang out with us, and my sister lost interest by New Year's Day. So...I had virtually 3 ovals I could race trains with.
Tyco Stuff:
(3) 7323 Chattanooga Sets (K Mart), (1) Durango Set (JC Penney), (1) Comin' Round The Mountain Set (JC Penney), 5 Virginian non-op hoppers (JC Penney), Purina, Bethlehem Steel and Revere Ware non-op hoppers (JC Penney), Soo Line 62ft. hi cube boxcar (JC Penney), Gulf triple dome tanker, Exxon triple dome tanker (JC Penney), 4 DC Comics boxcar set (JC Penney), a series of 40ft. boxcars, such as Penn Central, B&M, Santa Fe and Burlington CBQ (JC Penney). CP Rail (blue) 50ft. boxcar, Rail Box 50ft. boxcar (black door/silver roof).
Lighted Passenger Station, Lighted Service Station, Lighted Church, (2) Lighted Freight Stations, Lighted Factory
Exxon station kit, Interlocking Tower kit, Arlee Station kit, Water Tower kit (brick base).
Sometime between '78 and '80, I had acquired the Machine Shop kit and the Rolling Bridge kit, but never built them. I found them years later (in pieces) in a box of Lego's in the attic of my dad's workshop.
Also, sometime in '79, TV Guide ran an advert with a coupon for Tyco cabeese, priced at 27 cents each. My dad ordered 6 each of the "as advertised" (Rock Island, Chattanooga (yellow/red), Chattanooga (red), 689 Gen. Purpose, and Union Pacific.
The non-Tyco I remember was:
About 24-28 Life-Like Apple and Orange trees
About 36 Life-Like "Autumn" trees
Atlas Lumber yard
Cox yellow lumber loader
Life-Like Bedford Blinking Water Tower
5 or 6 Pola/Kibri/Vollmer cottages
Atlas Yard Tower
Atlas Large Green Water Tower
Kibri Greenhouse set (Deluxe: 1 large greenhouse, 2 smaller ones, 2 planters)
(3)Williams Brothers Storage Tanks (butterscotch colored plastic from the early '70's)
5 or 6 Athearn old-time cabeese (Orange SCL, Tuscan Santa Fe & Rio Grande, CB&Q, etc.)
AHM Gulf Flexi-Flow Hopper
AHM 40ft. Burlington CB&Q hi cube boxcar
Athearn Burlington CB&Q long black tanker (can't remember the size, but it is the common one from the '70's)
AHM Frisco GP-18
AHM L&N RS-11
Bachmann Santa Fe F7
Bachmann Chessie System F7 (there's that d@#$^d Chessie System again!)
As to the demise of this layout:
It was donated to our Boy Scout troop for Railroading merit badge in 1986, where it sat for about a year. My dad then sold it to the son-in-law of his boss (from work) for fifty dollars in 1987.
Edited by - theoldreliable on January 13 2010 10:23:00 PM
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Posted - January 24 2010 : 9:13:14 PM
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here are 2 pics of first layouts i done . There is another topic on forum of similar nature that was posted a couple of years ago with these same pictures
this picture circa 1985
this picture circa 1983
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