Model trains

The first memories of model trains I can recall are fleeting at best. Awakening fifty-five or more years of old memory cells is spotty.  You young folks ought to jot down those memories before they are lost in the clutter of today’s busy world.

One Christmas morning I awoke early as all kids do and ran into the living room to see if Santa came. The "if" instead of "what" has to do with a school teacher’s salary and World War II.  But Santa really paid me a wonderful visit. There it was; a box with a train set in it.  Other presents like socks and shirts went unnoticed.  That dull stuff could wait.

My Dad helped me set up the small, circular track while my Mom made us some breakfast.  And then it seemed like eating breakfast took forever.

I remember taking the steam locomotive apart to see what was inside. There was a little metal thing that flopped when the engine was stopped quickly so that when the throttle was turned up again it would run in the opposite direction.  I finally figured out that if I brought the engine to a stop slowly, the little thing would not flop and the engine would continue in the same direction as before.

This train set worked on three rail tracks but was not a Lionel.  I think it was manufactured by a company called Marks and was not of particularly high quality.  After I finally wore it out, my Mom used the rheostat throttle with a nickel resistance wire to make a Styrofoam cutter for her flower arrangements.  A few years later, in my high school years, she put that old throttle to good use when she owned a flower shop and one of my jobs was to cut up bulk Styrofoam into floral arrangement sized blocks.

    I had a wonderful surprise in early March 2005.  I just received the March 2005 issue of ScaleRails and was reading through it and soaking up all the news.  I usually go to the back where the Bulletin is to see if I recognize any names and there were my friends Paul Richardson (Master Builder - Cars AND Master Model Railroader) and David Davis (Association Volunteer).  This was not the surprise however.  The last part of the Region Roundup (page 10) was a write up about my "Cereal Train" article.  What a Hoot!!!  See the scanned images below:

Fast forward to February 2001.  At this time I have been doing database consulting for about eleven years and word of that gets around.  A company in Georgia found me and I was invited to do a little project for them in a small town south of Atlanta.  Knowing the budget was going to be tight and my customer would be picking me up in the morning and dropping me off in the evening, I bought a computer magazine, an outdoor magazine and a model railroading magazine as an alternative to mind-numbing television.

The model railroading magazine caught my attention and I nearly wore it out reading and re-reading the articles.  I was amazed at the huge variety of models I could buy.  But I did not know what to make of all this stuff about gage and scale.  What was all this stuff about G, HO, S, N and Z?

Not long after returning from Georgia, I began looking around the Dallas area for hobby shops and model train stores.  In doing this and much study scale began to make some sense.  I liked the Amtrak trains I would occasionally see pass through Dallas.  I thought the silver with red, white and blue trim was really nice.  I found some HO scale Amtrak passenger cars and bought two different brands so I could get familiar with the manufactures.  One brand was a disappointment and the other I liked.  I went back and got another style of passenger car and some snap track on which to place them on the credenza behind my home office desk.  The one that disappointed me is out in the garage somewhere out of the way.

I kind of liked N scale but realized I knew almost nothing about the hobby. I did not know where to take this new interest I had.  At my "train store" here in Dallas, Texas, I got my hands on a list of clubs in the area and I began the search for a club to join.

I knew I was interested in N scale and that the extent of my knowledge of model railroading. In my quest to visit all of the hobby shops in the area, I began to notice that there was a propensity for modelers with like-minded interests to come together forming groups, formally as clubs or informally as simply meeting at someone’s home to run trains or collectively build something relating to model railroading. Some clubs focus strictly on HO or N or S or G scale and sometimes clubs would have multiple scales they modeled. Some clubs met only occasionally and others met weekly or more. Some clubs had nominal dues and others had pricey dues. Some clubs had a facility or clubhouse and others set up layouts only at shows and some assembled modular layouts in each other’s garages for a week end of fun. The correlation is clubhouse equals pricey dues (QED).

I found one club that modeled in N and Z and had a clubhouse. On my first visit I met the program director and this young man gave me a tour of the layouts. He explained this and that to me and was clearly an ambassador for the club and the hobby. His name is Adam Amick and he encouraged me to join the Dallas, Garland & Mesquite Model Railroad, so I did.

After joining I became familiar with Z scale and did a whole lot of thinking about what I wanted to model. I settled on Z scale because I could build a large layout in a small space. Additionally, the Z-Mod standard worked nicely for a club layout, a train show and at home. Settling in on Z scale, I began a one year journey of learning about railroads and model railroads. I also learned just how expensive a clubhouse is!

I learned a lot during that year but dues cost and a cataract caused me to drop out.

I decided to join the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA) out of curiosity.  As it turned out, an old acquaintance from my early computer-programming days was the Director of Division 3, North-East Texas, which is a part of the Lone Star Region (LSR) of the NMRA.  That is a mouthful! Anyway, he encouraged me to join the LSR while I was at it.

Approximately eleven months passed and all I heard from the NMRA/LSR/DIV3 was a brief welcome letter and the periodic bulletins and newsletters.  This was not very satisfying.  However, in March of 2004, I was in the NMRA website and discovered the Achievement Program (AP) section.  I emailed the Regional AP director to find out what I had to do to qualify for the Golden Spike.  He emailed me back, copying the local AP director, suggesting I contact him.  I did, and a few days, later I had my Golden Spike.  In just a few days’ time, I went from disenfranchised to connected!

In April of 2004, the three of us in the TandB had out layout at the Mesquite, Texas train show.  At this show, my "Pecos River Bridge" module had its debut.  My friend, the Division 3 director, happened by the show and suggested I bring the bridge to the mini-convention in May of 2004.  My friends Adam and Stephen made several suggestions on improving the bridge. Wisely, I took their advice. The bridge scored high enough to qualify for the first of twelve structures need to qualify for the "Structure" AP.  WHAT A THRILL!  I am now working on more structures, scratch building cars and authoring. I hope to complete the requirement within a year.  If I can keep my schedule, I will probably be starting on other APs by then.

The NMRA, the LSR and Division 3 have added so much to my model-railroading hobby. It has me focused on quality like never before and with my initial success, I have gained the confidence to tackle more sophisticated modeling.

Happy Tracks…’Till We Meet Again ! ! !