Thank you Norm, George and Rick for the welcome. I am sure I will be asking quetions as I am always trying to improve.

Norm - I will have to plan a westside route down to Virginia Beach sometime so I can stop in and say Hi to you and your family.

Happy New Year everyone.

Stay Safe

Is this the express to Fire Island?

Hey! Name's Brian. Thought I'd get aboard and learn something. Been into trains since 1955 with my first Lionel layout. I'll prove it with an old picture if I can figure out how put it on this site. Moved to HO as a teen and have been building layouts ever since. I'm between layouts now looking for incentive.

I'm retired from several things, IBM, self-employed, school bus driver, etc. Originally from New York City but now I'm in North Carolina. I've lived in Maine and Florida and a few places between. I've built HO layouts in all those places.

I started modelling even before getting into Lionel. Plastic cars, tanks, planes, ships. Loved them all. Being a techie I enjoy the planning and wiring of a layout to super-detailing but I'm capable of some decent work, I think. I have always gravitated towards New York railroads and the early diesel era. I prefer to create my own road name but model the operation after a known railroad like the Penny or New Haven or NY Central. My favorite era includes the Penn Central GG1. Rode in one once. What a monster! Rode the LIRR for 20 years from 1968 onward. Saw a lot of change,. most for the better but I missed those old heavy passenger cars and seeing those GG1s in the Sunnyside yards.

Welcome aboard, Brian. I wonder how many of us started with Lionel and graduated to scale model railroading. There has to be a bunch. Thanks for taking time to introduce yourself.

George

Thanks for the welcome George. I wish I'd held onto my Lionel stuff. Worth a fortune now. Oh well. At my age that's true of most of my old "toys", not to mention cars! I had a red '55 Chevy convertible in 1962. Paid $400. I also had a brand new 1968 427 Corvette. Paid $5000. Jeez!

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Hello everyone,
My name is Chris Thomas and I live in Abilene, TX. In about 6 mths I'll be moving to Dover, De.

I'm married to a wonderful woman. Her name is Evan and i have 3 children. Jordan 19, Elijah 11, and Sydney 8.

I've been in the Air Force for 16 years. I've been fortunate to see a lot of the world.

In addition to trains, I say trains becuase I haven't modeled anything yet, I enjoy playing basketball.

I hope to learn some things from here and become a decent model railroader.

Thanks for your time.

Chris

Chris,

Welcome to the forum and thanks for introducing yourself. Good luck with the move to Delaware.

Welcome Chris, and looking forward to your contributions.

Welcome BK & Chris! Sounds like you guys fit right in.

Brian, what part of the City you from? I'm a rebel from Far Rockaway, Queens. Moved 'south' in '82 to NJ and finally really moved south to VA in '96. I absolutely hate going north of the Mason Dixon line, unless I can jump over NY/NJ and CT...

R/,

Norm

Welcome aboard, Chris. I’m sure you’ll learn a lot here. I know I have.

Enjoy your tour at Dover AFB.

George

Hi All...

My buddy Norm Wolf has invited me over for a visit to this forum, and looks like this is right up my alley.

My name is Anthony or Tony which ever you prefer and I hail from Winston Salem NC. I have been in the restaurant business all of my adult life and have always enjoyed my career. I always considered myself very fortunate that at almost 59 yrs old I still love what I do, just not as fast as I used to be.

My story is basically the same,getting started in trains with my first Lionel train set when I was a kid. It took a back seat for the next 15-20 years till my oldest was born in the early 70's. That's when I proceeded to introduce him to a small layout in HO Scale. I messed around with it for a couple years, but as he got older , he lost interest. It was at that time that I became interested in scenery and structure building. The layout took a backseat and was later dismantled , but I always loved the building aspect.

Now that my brood is all raised and have families of there own, I once again have somewhat, the time to build. I mostly scratchbuild in HO Scale, although every once in a while, I will put a kit together just for the fun of it. I recently built Foss Landing , which I hope to put into a large waterfront diorama I have been messing around with. This diorama will be abot 30"x48". I don't know if I will ever get the chance to put a layout together again, the restaurants keep me plenty busy.

Well gang, time to head out to the restaurant. I look forward to chatting and learning from the great work I see in this forum.

Have a great day everyone.

Welcome to the forum, Tony. We hope that you enjoy your time here.

Welcome Anthony,

I've been following your great modeling on the other forum and you certainly have a lot to offer the members here.

My wife and I also plan on making a purposeful trip to NC just to try one of your restaurants (maybe your wife's new one).

You'll enjoy the group here.

Hi I'm Tod and I live in Buckeye az, been into trains sometimes unto my ears since I was just 10 months old when I tried to do a Gomez Addams on my fathers Marklin layout. Even while in the navy I had some sort of train project going on including a small N scale layout I had put into a spare locker in the chiefs Quarters during Desert Storm (Iraq war part I " The Training Mission"). After the Navy I decided to play with 1/1 scale trains and hired out with UPRR doing most MoW jobs from section man to foreman. I have models both successfully and unsuccessfully in Z to G. Right now I have a On30 Shelf layout 8 feet from the ground going through my living room, dinning room, the chimney, a couple of walls and the kitchen with a staging area being built in my bedroom. It has one 7 foot tressel and a 6 foot arch bridge that spans two openings, one being a window the other a hallway. It's runs on a Bachmann Dynamis Pro Box and has all Bachmann Rolling Stock except for a rail cleaner car I scotch built just prior to Christmas. My thoughts on modeling are that if you don't think you have room for a layout then you really need to think outside that box some times the answer is right over your head. My wife likes the trains so much she strong armed me into starting a blog about my layout. I'm sure glad I found this forum cause It has already given me quite a few ideas for my layout.

Hey

After several years of dabbling into the slot car hobby, I am back once again into the trains. I began my hobby as a youth receiving a Lionel HO train set for Christmas. I ran that little train almost everyday, and with the heavy snows in the mountains of Utah, that was the perfect hobby. I love building structures, and if any of you can remember, Boy's Life magazine would have occasional articles, with printed brick paper patterns to build structures for you layout.

i have built a couple large layouts for friends in the area here, and had quite a collection of trains in HO scale by 2005, the year of Katrina. That storm brought in several feet of water into my home, along with the mud and who knows what, and took all that we owned with it. I had train stuff in four large vinyl tubs, with the lids on them, and ..stupid me...though they had made it unscathed. So I paid attention to the rest of the house. After a couple of weeks, i finally got to the train tubs, only to find they were full of sea water and mud and guck! Yuck, the salt water was eating up all the copper and other things...and, it was a loss. Even the Brass engines took heavy damage, more than it was worth to fix them. So, with a sad heart, I carried them out to the refuse pile, along with everything else.

at that time I came across the slot cars and began to obtain one or two every so often...my other love in my youth. But, with no one to race with, i finally began to sell them on EBay and used the money to purchase my first new loco in 5 years, a 2-8-0 On30 built by Bachman. I love the scale size, and how it uses HO width track. my old eyes are not what they used to be, so the larger scale is pleasing, and I simply love the hefty feel of the locos and cars.

Now i am trying to learn DCC, and built a layout in a 12 x 17 back room, which i finished off, just for the train room! Have not laid any track yet, and have a few more things to learn before i begin, but i look forward to the experience. And, as a bonus to me, I have a 4 year old Grandson, who simply loves trains. So all have to have sound as well as DCC! He is also my leverage, as Grandma has a hard time saying no when Grandpa simply has to have another car or building for the layout!!

Anyway I look forward to asking many questions and learning much from all of you good fellers. Thanks for the read, I appreciate it. Now, Let the Good Times Roll!

Thanks Bruce.. Been checking out the forum, looks great.