My HO Layout began in December of 1973. It was at this time I received my first trainset. It was my 7th Birthday (The box said for ages eight and up, so I was feeling pretty good!) It was a Tyco "Burlington Express" with a GP-20, flat car, box car, and caboose. My brother added a covered hopper car as his gift.
As a youngster, my dad used to take me to Green Bay Road to watch the Chicago & Northwestern Trains pass through Evanston. The combination of the "real trains" and an HO layout was too powerful. I've been hooked ever since!
At age 11, I built a temporary, but sprawling layout's in my parent's living room. I used some old paneling and layed the track on the back side of the panels. Why my parents let me do this, I'm still not sure. It was a huge (or at least I remember it that way), double track oval. My friend, Martin, and I would spend hours with the set.
Martin had an HO scale Jouef Turboliner, which was about the coolest train we had ever seen. We ran that around the layout over and over again! In sixth grade, we took the real Amtrak Turboliner from Glenview to Milwaukee and back. Martin, at age 12, bought a sandwich for the engineer and asked that the conductor deliver it. As a result, we were invited to set in the cab. That was one of the greatest train rides I have ever experienced.
The layout ultimately was moved into a five foot crawl space. The layout was on 2 foot legs, nailed directly to plywood sheets. I was in high school at the time, so I was able to get under it - with some trouble - for wiring. My friend Steve and I would spend hours building the set, making mountains from plaster and paper towels. We experimented with scenery techniques like making strata formations.
Going in the crawl space was an adventure. The house's support beams were lower then five feet. I had many lumps on my head as a consequence. We eventually wore hard hats as a safety measure.
This layout was about ten foot by twelve. The track work was so-so and the layout was derailment prone. Equipment was mostly Athearn and Tyco. At the time, most of my engines were Santa Fe.
At age 16, I worked at Kay Bee Toys and Hobby, back when they really had something that was considered "hobby." One day, they decided to get rid of all the Rivarossi HO trains. My manager asked if I would be interested in the locomotives at a sizable discount. I ended up with a Blue Goose, NYC Hudson, Amtrak GG1 and some other equipment.
In college, I continued to purchase equipment and do some custom painting, including locomotives for Wisconsin Central, Cedar Rapids & Iowa City and Iowa Interstate.. But a layout would have to wait until after I was married and purchased my first home in Winchester, Virginia. There, three 4x8" pieces of plywood were put together and a reasonable layout was developed over three years.
Then I was relocated to Texas. We bought a home with no basement and everything went into storage. Fortunately, we moved again to Illinois and this house had a basement. I decided to build this layout using the "domino" method described in Model Railroader. This looked like a stable way to build modules and put them together for a layout. Essentially, 2 foot by four foot "dominos" are constructed with plywood and legs attached and braced to the domino. Multiple dominos are attached to each other and special four foot by four foot corners are built, too.
This layout was a giant loop twelve foot by twenty. The track plan was simple. A big, double track loop. Scenery was slow to come, but eventually half of the layout had towns, grass and ballast. Equipment stayed pretty much the same as before. My rolling stock fleet grew and represented everything from modern "spine cars" to the 1940's streamliners.
The big advantage of building a layout with dominos is that they are portable. Just in case we relocated. And we were.
The layout moved to Minneapolis and was reconstructed, although considerably smaller. This layout was essentially a folded dog-bone. It had a large mountain and tunnel built form foam insulation board. It also featured an Amoco refinery and a Pillsbury Mill (I was working for Pillsbury at the time, and had spent 8 years with Amoco), But, this layout too, would not last. I took a job in the Chicago area with BPAmoco, and took over one-third of our new home's basement to rebuild the layout.
This layout employed more dominos, but was essentially the same configuration. It was able to re-use all parts from the Minneapolis layout, with some major rebuilding, of course!
Constructing the layout mostly over holidays, the set measures 18 feet in length. At its widest, the layout is 12 feet wide, while at its narrowest, it is just two feet wide. The track plan is simple and is a "twisted dog bone" that rises four inches to cross over itself. It is single track operation with only two real "signal blocks." The plan includes one long siding and some interchange tracks. Yards are really for storage and use in the industrial areas.
Some trolley wire and catenary are up. But the majority of the layout is traditional track (Atlas nickel silver track and turnouts). Minimum radius is 22".
Most building kits are store-bought and assembled by myself. However, my Northbrook CNS&M station is scratch-built based on Eric Bronsky's great article in Model Railroader.
In terms of equipment, the current layout involved a "portfolio rebalancing." Everything that wasn't the late 1950's or early 1960's was sold off on eBay. These funds were used to upgrade my equipment and focus on 1) brass equipment 2) more collectible items and 3) my favorite railroads: Chicago, North Shore & Milwaukee and the Burlington.
eBay was a fabulous way to get reasonably priced, collectable items that would otherwise be impossible to find at hobby shops. The Suydam North Shore cars are great models. They look very real and run fine. You can see from my "roster" that I have one of each car that was made for the North Shore. Getting some other equipment was more difficult and took a lot of patience. I acquired a Nickel Plate Products Libertyliner and a Oregon Electric/CNS&M freight locomotive from eBay (they are awaiting painting).
I also purchased the Model railroad warehouse GE Steeple cab kits ( http://www.mrrwarehouse.com/MRW-Made/steeple.htm) for my first foray into scratch building. This proved to be a fun but cumbersome effort to build.
I also have an MTS CNS&M piggyback car. The North Shore Line was the first railroad to innovate this service and a piggyback terminal was close to Wrigley Field. Additionally, I picked up a CNS&M Observation car that recall the days when they ran limited passenger trains like "The Prairie State Special" and "Cream City Special."
Why the North Shore Line? I never saw the railroad operate - except for museums like the Illinois Railway Museum (www.irm.org), East Troy and the Fox River Trolley Museum http://www.foxtrolley.org/ . But how could you not like a railroad that operated on Chicago's loop, zipped along at 80 mph on a superb right-of-way and then navigated the city streets of Milwaukee? Besides, the equipment was great (Electroliners), They were innovative (piggyback cars) and creative (if we can't have real streamlined equipment, let's make it look streamlined -- Silverliners). As a kid, I would bike along the old right-of-way on the Skokie Valley Route and the Shore Line. Check out the site www.northshoreline.com for a great account of the railroad and why others feel the same way.
I quickly amassed a collection of Life-Like Proto 1000/2000 Burlington equipment. Lombard Hobbies has been an excellent source and I highly recommend the store. http://www.lombardhobbies.com/ To go with the Proto E-8's I picked up Three Brother's Burlington Commuter coaches, which zip through my hometown of Naperville. These were purchased at Larry's Hobbies in Houston Texas. A great shop and I'm fortunate to get down there for work a couple of times a year.
My goal for the layout is simple. I like running the trains around. This allows me to run the equipment I like and work on building scenes and equipment. I don't do prototype switching. This explains why I have not converted to DCC yet.
And yes, I am a train geek!
Enjoy the layout tour!
