How it all began...

[Andy Y]

Thinking about how new starters come into the hobby I looked back at where my involvement with the hobby started. There were a few 'hand me down' push-along items from an older brother knocking about in the toybox and I do recall trying to cut out wagon plans from Railway Modeller and trying to stick them together with Gloy to make a wagon; it lacked something.

 

What I really wanted for Christmas, aged about 5, was 'an electric train set'.

 

 

What I got was an oval of track with a siding on a board, a second-hand Jinty and a few wagons. It wasn't what I had in mind but Dad had built it and it lasted a few years with various additions.

 

So how, why, and at what age, did you get sucked in?

[Big James]

I was 6 when my parents bought me Hornby Percy trainset and various family men ever chipped in with building track etc. This was all kept in a shed that was freezing in the summer and you would roast in the evening. Although the board and track are long gone Percy is still around and currently lives in a display cabinet as his given up the ghost. . I only really got into railway modelling proper when I received the flying Scotsman when I was a 11 she was the most beautiful engine I owned (till I found I preferred small SR tank engines more).

 

But James

[forest2807]

Mainline/Palitoy Branch Freight Set with green J72 and a few wagons and an oval of track. Later it developed into a  6'x4' board which was hinged and could be lowered down from the wall for running sessions. Later acquisitions for birthdays and Christmas included Mainline Collett 0-6-0 and Class 03, Hornby Class 25, Lima Deltic and Class 117, plus assorted rolling stock.

[johndon]

This one for me:

 

Tri-ang Hornby 'The Freightmaster' Electric Train Set 1967. by ManOfYorkshire, on Flickr

[chrisf]

I had an Ever-ready tube train when I was much too young for it.  My parents tried again and opted for Hornby O gauge clockwork.  When I was considered to have outgrown that Tri-ang TT had appeared so we went down that road.

 

Chris

[chris p bacon]

For me aged 8 in 1970 it was the Hornby Night Mail set

 

http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=556

 

I had a large board with the oval from the set fixed down (System 6) and outside that was an oval of 'Super 4' donated by a neighbour with a siding !! this doubled up as Engine shed, yard, branch or whatever else my imagination thought it was. Big brother had some Dublo 3 rail which was converted to 2 rail so I shortly had an A4 'Silver King' . . I was hooked. . .

 

Funny thing is, I still have a large oval of track so some things don't change.

[Brit70053]

Earliest memories from age less than three years : Clockwork set tin track gauge unknown, 4 wheeled tin plate Loco with key permanently attached and a carriage with passengers printed in the windows.

Third Christmas; Hornby O gauge clockwork set:- 4 wheel tank loco and goods wagons plus two passenger coaches - But the picture of Britannia on the box lid was what made the greatest impression on me, I think I dreamed of owning a model of that loco from that day until it finally happened , Tri-Ang R259s for Christmas aged 12 years.

 

The Hornby Dublo R1 Tank goods set I received aged 8 was an interim move from the clock work set into OO gauge Electric, but never had so much appeal to me, again the Duchesses on the box lid were far more attractive to my young mind than the actual contents of the set I received. I was grateful to have an 'Electric Train Set' however.

 

No one in the family had any railway 'connections' other than as quite regular users of the local Durham to Bishop Auckland or Sunderland services , but it seems to me as I look back that someone was determined I'd have railways as an interest. I never stood a chance and I'm happy about it.

[Andy Y]

But the picture of Britannia on the box lid was what made the greatest impression on me, I think I dreamed of owning a model of that loco from that day until it finally happened , Tri-Ang R259s for Christmas aged 12 years.

....  again the Duchesses on the box lid were far more attractive to my young mind than the actual contents of the set I received.

 

So it wan't just me then! http://www.rmweb.co.uk/community/index.php?/topic/135220-train-set-box-art/

[MarkSG]

My brother and I had a "Big Big" train set when we were young. I have no memory of how and when we first got it, I presume it must have been a Christmas or birthday present, but that detail is lost in the mists of time. But, over time, it got added to with various extra items of track, locos and rolling stock, until we'd got enough to be able to lay down a pretty comprehensive network that ran between several rooms of the house! And then had to pack it all away before bedtime.

 

My brother eventually lost interest in trains - he went on to be into Airfix planes in a big way - but I stayed with them. Once I'd grown a bit tired of having to put down and then pack away the Big Big Train every time I wanted to play with it, I decided that I'd like a "proper" train set instead, that I could put on a board. So I pestered my family every Christmas and birthday. And.... nothing. They never bought me one!

 

However, a friend of mine did have a train set, but, like my brother, he had moved on from trains and was into something else (in his case, Mamod live steam engines). Se we did a swapsie deal, and I acquired the nucleus of a train set - a Hornby Dublo loco and a few wagons.

 

This coincided with a family move to a much bigger house (a former farmhouse), and another friend of mine who lived just down the road from the new house also had a train set. So he used to bring his stuff round to mine and we'd set up a layout on the floor of a spare room - this time, the house was big enough for us not to have to pack it away at the end of the day, so he'd leave it there over the weekend (or even a week or so during the school holidays) before taking his stock home.

 

In the meantime, I'd started reading Railway Modeller and twisting my dad's arm to take me to model railway exhibitions. Eventually, I persuaded him to let me have one of the sheds, in which he built for me fixed, oval baseboard big enough for a fairly sizeable roundy-roundy. Heaven! Also, by now, I had managed to convince the family that "train stuff" would be a suitable Christmas or birthday present, so after a while I had acquired three brand new and up to date locos, a Class 47, an 08 shunter and a DMU, as well as a selection of rolling stock.

 

After a while, though, I decided that I'd prefer to model steam rather than modern image. That wasn't because of any particular memories of the real thing - although I am (just) old enough to, in theory, remember main line steam the reality is that I don't, and I wasn't (at the time) all that into heritage railways either. Rather, it was because, having read RM and gone to exhibitions, I'd realised that a Class 47 wouldn't be seen hauling a mixed goods or a three-coach passenger train, and an 08 wouldn't be used on mainline duties at all. And I had neither the space nor the money to run an authentic modern-image layout.

 

Steam, though, was a different matter. A tank engine with a couple of coaches, or a short mixed goods, would be perfectly authentic. And it fitted into both my budget and my layout. So the first loco I bought with my own money was one of these:

 

 

(Which I've still got, although it's a non-runner now).

 

I later added a Hornby Ivatt 2MT, and then focussed on building up a selection of suitable rolling stock and constructing a scenic layout.

 

The first layout didn't go very far towards completion, as my dad decided that he wanted the shed it was in as a summerhouse instead, so I was unceremoniously turfed out into a different one. But that shed remained mine for several years, and in there I honed my techniques until, at least in my opinion, I was reasonably good at things like building scenery, constructing kits and weathering RTR rolling stock. I was heavily influenced by the likes of Allan Downes, and put together a fair number of scratchbuilt buildings using his techniques.

 

That, of course, all came to a juddering halt when I left home. The rolling stock and everything salvageable from the layout was boxed up and put into the loft. And then a life of rented flats and shared houses meant no scope for any further modelling. I did make an abortive start on a shunting plank a couple of times, but nothing ever came of it.

 

Even though I now own a reasonably-sized house, I still don't have a layout to match the one I had in my teens. Children, and the need to use a room of the house as an office (I work from home), rather get in the way a bit. But I do have space for a couple of shelf layouts, and I've got two different projects in varying stages of completion. And, one day, I keep telling myself, we'll get round to having the loft converted so I can have a proper roundy-roundy again

[ian@stenochs]

I got my first train set at age 14, Dublo 2-6-4tank and freight wagons. Can you imagine a 14 year old wanting a train set now? Or even admitting he had one!

[Fat Controller]

My first train-set arrived as a Christmas present in 1958; it was the Hornby R1 goods train. With hindsight, I can see it was partially intended to soften me up prior to the arrival of my little sister. I wasn't allowed to play with it unsupervised for a couple of years. Two of the wagons survive to this day, albeit on Parkside chassis; they are sixty years old.

[Andy Y]

I wasn't allowed to play with it unsupervised for a couple of years.

 

No; baby sisters aren't for playing with.

[PaulRhB]

I started a little collection of my first trains after picking up the HST set for £20 at a show last year.

We used to play with my Dads Hornby Dublo making huge layouts on the floor.

My very first train was the Magic Roundabout set in the early 70's, That is the only original I still had!

My first electric train was the red and yellow playcraft battery loco. I then got my first OO stuff, the black clockwork Hornby set so I could run my engine on the Dublo. In the late 70's my Dad decided to build us a OO layout and we started with his Dock shunter growling away followed at Christmas 78 (I think ), with the HST

 

[ClikC]

Never actually had a proper 'boxed set' as it were. I just had hand me downs from friends and family. Two triang-Hornby locos, a red 0-4-0 and a GWR pannier tank with a mix of rolling stock. a 4x6 double oval in the kitchen. which was primarily used as launch facilities for the world's fastest Percy...

 

Regards

 

Matt

[EddieB]

From as early as I can remember there were trains.  At first there was some O gauge tinplate that must have come second-hand - two orange Britannias and a red streamliner "Coronation" - all on wind-up 0-4-0 chasses.  There was also a Playcraft HO clockwork, from the days that Woolworth's used to sell model trains.

 

However the life-defining moment came at Christmas when I was four years old.  It was a Trix Twin (3-rail) set - two electric locos, one with two passenger carriages, the other with three(?) freight wagons, a double oval of track, with points and sidings.  The whole thing operated from controllers that screwed on to the terminals of those dry block batteries (later replaced by a pair of 6V transformers).  Not only the train set itself, but my parents must have spent every night in December constructing and painting Airfix kits and accessories.  I had a station (building and platform), a farm (thatched farm house complete with fences and animals), the famous Airfix civilians. All laid out on a couple of pieces of hardboard, on the floor.

 

In terms of awe, nothing later ever came close to that Christmas morning.  Other train sets came later as Christmas presents through my junior school years - first the Blue Pullman, next Freightmaster (as illustrated above, through my Brush Type 2 was blue) - each one highly memorable and cherished.  I'm going all soppy just thinking about it.

[Worsdell forever]

Probably about 4 years old, late '70s, what I wanted was a 'big black train' having seen one going over the crossing at Grosmont from the front door of me great aunts house, she had the Waterloo Tea Room (as it was then). What I got was this - https://cdn.globalauctionplatform.com/cf16ef4d-9777-4ffa-b6fa-a5450109a5a5/c7df2c40-40bd-4ad0-d835-01f81e26965f/540x360.jpg not quite right but it was great fun, Dad built an 8' x 4' baseboard that was suspended from my bedroom ceiling that could be lowered using a clothes airer pulley system.

[Steamport Southport]

I started a little collection of my first trains after picking up the HST set for £20 at a show last year.

We used to play with my Dads Hornby Dublo making huge layouts on the floor.

My very first train was the Magic Roundabout set in the early 70's, That is the only original I still had!

My first electric train was the red and yellow playcraft battery loco. I then got my first OO stuff, the black clockwork Hornby set so I could run my engine on the Dublo. In the late 70's my Dad decided to build us a OO layout and we started with his Dock shunter growling away followed at Christmas 78 (I think ), with the HST

 

IMG_4791.JPG

 

I had the full set of The Magic Roundabout and still haven't forgiven my Mum for giving it away to my cousin when I was at school. Who promptly wrecked it all. Apparently worth a small fortune now.

 

Funnily enough I also had the Hornby black clockwork set as my first set. Still got that though.

 

 

Model trains were about the house when I was a kid, my Dad still had bits from the 1960s and my older brother had some. But neither were really "into" model railways. When I was at primary school one of my teachers noticed I was into trains and passed me some old models that were her brothers. Mainly some HD and Triang wagons, but in them were a few Kitmaster kits including the Pug. That was the first proper kit that I built with a bit of supervision. Imagine letting a seven year old loose with glue and enamel paint now? 

 

Next Christmas I found a GWR Freight Train set and three GWR four wheel carriages. Can't believe that was forty years ago. 

 

 

 

Jason

[TonyA]

Somewhere around 1952, my father built a large layout in a room on the top floor. It consisted of a large circuit with a branch line and was mainly GWR with a Graham Farish King and 81xx and a Gaiety 57xx pannier. I was allowed to look but not touch which was probably just as well. The controller consisted of a couple of rheostats and lots of Air Ministry switches together with two uncased transformers.

 

After my father died in 1957, we moved house and the layout was dismantled. Fast forward to 1962 when I spotted ads for the reformed Graham Farish in Railway Modeller and started planning my own layout. There followed various attempts at getting something built until 2001 when early retirement kicked in I actually finished something. The rest is history.

 

Tony

[Neil]

My first train set (age three, I think) was what must have been one of the last Hornby O gauge tinplate sets. This lasted until I was about five when my Grandad visited us while we were holidaying in Filey and bought me and my brother Traing OO gauge clockwork trainsets. Mine had the North British look alike diesel and a couple of wagons, my brother the steam engine with a short mark one-ish carriage. The following Christmas we went electric, me with the Triang Midlander set and my brother with a blue 37 and matching carriages.

[Spitfire2865]

I have a photo somewhere of myself aged 3-5 staring intently at my grandfathers Lionel trains.  

[Ian Morgan]

When I was very little, I had a Tri-Ang Steeplecab with two long wheelbase wagons. I loved it for a while, but grew out of it and focused on Matchbox and Corgi cars instead.

 

 

 

Then, about 1970 (age 14) we did a family visit to the Bluebell Railway, and I bought a second hand Railway Modeller magazine (Nov 1969). I read it over and over. Such inspiration. Building actual railways, not just toy trains. I was hooked.

 

[Marly51]

Well it was the 1950s when I was four, and my cousin had this immaculate Hornby Cockwork Trainset complete with tinplate station, small metal figures and accessories! A delight for a young child, but I was only allowed to watch while he set it up on my granny's kitchen floor with its linoleum covering, so it must have been quite noisy when the train was careering round the track. I think not being able to 'play' with the trainset left a subconscious longing to create a small world, but it had to come to life with a railway running through it!

 

 

[RedgateModels]

Like many of my age I started with a couple of second hand Triang Princesses (still got them) and a handfull of the grey based track. This was augmented with newer Super4 track and lead to a 6x4 board being bought again second hand that leaned up against the wall when not in use. System 6 track was added with the adaptor tracks (remember them?) and I soon had a fixed layout in the bedroom until I came back from college at 21.

 

HSTs and APT-P ran round at high speed

 

When I started earning I moved up into the loft with grand plans to recreate Camden shed. Never really happened. but I laid a lot of track (on foam). 

 

Big gap here for Rock bands, motorbikes, pubs etc

 

It all stayed up the loft until I got married in 1997, Dad took it all down and presented me with a box full of stuff a few months after I moved out. 

 

Then Josh was born in 2002 and my presence on RMweb soon after is history

[backofanenvelope]

For me it was in late 60’s when my brother was given the Hornby Albert Hall set and Pullman coaches that we set up on kitchen table. He lost interest but wouldn’t let me have it so I was given a circle of track and I think a dock tank with a wagon by my grandfather. This was then added to over next few years with a rural rambler set which fuelled the imagination for years and finally a class 47 loco. I think I was about 14 when I managed to get a sheet of 8x4 chipboard and tried to make a layout as dad wasn’t at all handymanish it was a failure and never finished, so no change there then!. Still remember it like it was yesterday..

P.S I was fired up by a present of a years Railway Modeller subscription which I then went on to save my pocket money until stopped buying in the 2000’s kept them till last move the slashed and scanned and I. Now still enjoying them rather than them gathering dust and slung out.

Edited June 26, 2018 by backofanenvelope

[The Johnster]

You can almost tell the age of posters to the thread by the first train set they had.  I was 6 in 1958 when xmas turned up a completely unexpected Triang Rovex Black Princess train set; oval of grey 'standard' track and 2 very short vaguely Stanier-ish LMS coaches, and a controller which fitted on to a big battery.  

 

The family legend is that I was about 15 months old when I saw a train from my pushchair; this would have been from the lane by Monthermer Road bridge in Cathays, Cardiff, on the Rhymney main line.  I was instantly entranced and delighted, and took to moving any object I could find around on the floor and going 'ch ch ch ch ch oo oo'.  My parents had no connection with or interest in railways, but great uncle Ted, who lived with us, had been a Steward on the Port to Port Express before developing a professional bad back and an interest in horse racing, was a driving force and I kept to the True Faith.  By 1956 I'd given up on a train set, and was duly impressed, amazed, and delighted.

 

I was also almost instantly disappointed.  Even to my 6 year old view, the curves were too sharp, the couplings ugly and the stock too short, but, much worse, the whole thing was set up on the dining room table and taken down again to clear it for dinner, do these people not understand what xmas is supposed to be about!!!.  This illustrated a basic problem that was to dog me for many years; where does the railway go, because even then I knew that no progress could be made unless it was at least semi-permanently set up.

 

Parents were at least sensible enough to know that what I wanted for xmas and birthdays from here on in was a loco for xmas and stock or extra track for birthdays, though they had no idea which ones I wanted.  The dining room table put away after use layout expanded into 2 circuits, the inside one a figure 8 with a diamond crossing, and a trailing crossover to connect them.  A '748' Saddle Tank and another Black Princess, with original Rovex couplers courtesy of a neighbour whose boy had grown out of it, and we had a few goods wagons now as well.

 

When I was 9, Father decided that the layout could go in the garage if it folded up out of the way when he wanted to put a car in there, which was still not ideal but a step in the right direction.  A massive 10'x4' board was built, an up and down circuit in a mix of standard and series 3 laid, and the trailing crossover supplemented by sidings for both circuits.  By now we had a transformer and two 'proper' Triang controllers.  I regard this as my first layout, and learned a lot from it, especially not to build a baseboard the way Father thought was proper, hardboard on framing painted green that sagged and warped horribly.  The trains coped, though, and an EMU, 08, and 31 appeared over the next 3 years.  I built a couple of scale length Kitmaster coaches in this period.

 

Father decided to reclaim the garage when I was 12, and I was banished to the attic.  Father's DIY let me down again here, with floorboards nailed haphazardly to joists, but the baseboard was at least chipboard on 2x2 timber legs and solid enough to withstand a direct 5 megaton hit, and to my specifcations; 12'x 6' with a central operating well.  I was laying my own track by now, and experimenting with flexi, Peco 'Formoway'.  Blackwater Harbour was an imaginary Irish Ferry port on the North Devon coast, GW with SR running powers; Triang Hornby Hall and Hymek and a Winston Churchill, along with some of my own less credible creations involving Triang mechanisms under Airfix construction kit bodies, a large prairie with one of the old Black Princess mechs, a 56xx from another large prairie and the mech from the 08, a 42xx from a third and a Hornby Dublo 8F bought second hand without a tender, and a 43xx from a CoT and prairie chassis and a tender motor with home made drive.  I am not proud of these abominations, but they started a lifetime of modelling based on a mix and match/cut and shut/will this go with that philosophy that is currently being trotted out in my project to build a 94xx with a Lima body and Bachmann chassis.  

 

The loft layout was ultimately a failure, as it was like an oven up there in the summer and freezing in the winter; we had proper winters then.  Father's solution to this was to provide as small parraffin heater to stop the water header tank freezing and 'take the chill off', which it didn't.  The condensation from the heater added rust to my other problem, which was that the trackwork was tearing itself to bits because of expansion and contraction.  But it lasted until I left home, eventually being destroyed by my 3 year old nephew, who knew no better and was let loose up there by mother, who should have.  Glue and paint got everywhere, and I got the blame!

 

That was it until I had my own home and was able to make my own space available, and a further hiatus following a divorce has meant that my current modelling period started about 2 years ago.  But I kept in touch with magazines, and the dream, a railway permanently set up in the main heated and ventilated area of my home, never faded; it is now, after many years (I am 66) a reality.