Photos of first layouts from back in the day

[Philip H]

and here's a close up of the shelf extension.  You can see the plate girder bridge in the image above.



The little yard was beyond this scene to the right.  The lower line in the front was a short branch to a little urban switching area, complete with street trackage (that never ran right but looked swell...)

Lee

Lee,
Don't look now, but Ed got into a time warp and Conrail'ed your layout . . .

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Nope, that was his OWN doing! Why do you think my CR stuff finds such a home on the WM...

[C855B]

Gosh - no pix to contribute from here. There just weren't any.

Dad quickly realized that when he bought the American Flyer stuff for me when I was six that he had created a monster. Nothing was done from that point on to acknowledge it, much less encourage it. Even buying accessories was completely out of my pocket, which was pretty tough on a seven-year-old's quarter-a-week allowance. Fortunately (and to his chagrin), much of the engineer-in-training construction sets from subsequent Christmases could be converted into sort-of-scenery - there was more than one Erector set truss bridge. 

My first N layout was in 1968 and was only tolerated because it slid out of the way, under my bed.

What struck me as odd about all this was that his best friend was a superb HO modeler.

[wm3798]

Yes, it's true.  In the beginning, I was a devotee of Big Blue.  Mostly a result of early fan trips to the Enola area in the dawn of the 1980's.  All those paint schemes!  I was like a kid in a candy shop.

So in its first incarnation, the Laurel Valley was a spun-off Penn Central branch that Conrail didn't want.  If half of the cool engines that are out now were out then, I might still be doing that...

Lee

[Ed Kapuscinski]

And THAT Lee, is why it's good to have friends.

After you do your steam ops session, I still think it'd be fun to do a CR one.

Too bad you'd have to abandon half the layout... lol.

[up1950s]

I had a O-27 layout as a kid that was a folded over dog bone my Father built for me .

I had an oval with a passing siding in HO after that , another Father built layout , Athearn NH McGunnis F-7's with HiFi drive .

Then I got out of railroading and went into U-control model airplanes .

After the Navy (1967-12 ) , I got married ( 1973 ) and got back into HO .
 
Built this that did become functional but unfinished , these are the only shots . I had a circuit that controlled 4 trains automatically via a double 100 second cam timer . Every 100 seconds a track and switches would align and a train would pull out and complete the lap and stop . It had automatic grade compensation . The passenger train would stop at the station , then when the other 3 trains did their tour , the passenger would leave the station and return to the staging yard . I could pre-program the trains to go in either direction . The turnouts had a loop failure protection ckt , so before the train was juiced to leave the staging all the turnouts had to be aligned , if not there would be a failure light and the train wouldn't get the juice to go , and the system would shut dawn . Because of contact problems , arcing causing false opens on the feedback ckt , and non turnout throws for the same reason , I would fail every 10th time or so . Very labor intensive under the table PIA . But when it worked it was like magic . The parts I used cannot be acquired off the shelf easily , it was an old Telco thing . First cam indexed the unit , set the turnouts , and feedback checked completion . Second cam juiced the train . Diode blocks stopped the train , pots reduced power down hill , pots reduced medium power on the level , pots controlled full power was the up hill and start the train blocks .
    












Then there were kids , and it all came down .

[Philip H]

Ritchie,
Cool layout.  Especially the control scheme.  Even with just plywood, I bet it was a hit to run.

Now, about your demonstration model - the outfit, if I may say, was a good choice (I'm sure you agree) but the head dress has to go.  Its a little over the top (!) even for the 70's. 

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Whoa, that's pretty amazing.

[asciibaron]

Did anyone else notice we all seem to have the same haircut?

i had an onion tied to my belt.  it was the style at the time

[C855B]

Did anyone else notice we all seem to have the same haircut?

Hmmm... not here. Dad insisted on buzzcuts for the boys and "pixies" for the girls. I wasn't allowed to grow it out until high school.  :-\

[asciibaron]

i really am bummed i can't find the pictures of my first "serious" layout.  i'm being very honest, it was a tad rough, but for my age, it was well done.  it was 1983 and i was using foam from appliance packaging as the base for my scenery and drapped it with plaster cloth (had a few rolls for some reason).  i couldn't afford trees, so i used lichen.  from Life-Like.  in the Orange box.

i did try to build a horseshoe curve layout in HO in 4x8, so there was that...

[Ed Kapuscinski]

Did anyone else notice we all seem to have the same haircut?

i had an onion tied to my belt.  it was the style at the time

Ahahahahahahahah

[Ntrainz1]

I started with a shelf layout




Bob.

[Packer]

I've only had one that kept evolving. I first got it when I was 3 or 4, it lasted until I was 18.
This is the first picture of the layout, when I was 12:


This was the last rendition:

I took it down because my brother and his friends were tearing it up. The deciding moment was when I found a Conrail F7 and some cars stuck into the foam so that they were stuck pointing straight up and down.

[AlkemScaleModels]

I couldn't find a picture of my first layout that my Dad built for my twin brother and I, but I did find a shot of the layout I built for my kids in 1992 or 93.
It was based on a hollow core door that slid under the bed. Other than getting dusty, it worked out real well for them.