About
The most glorious morning of my life occurred in 1957, when I was 7 years old. It was Christmas morning and my sisters and I lined up in the hallway in front of my parents bedroom door. Excited anticipation filled the air as we waited for our parents to load their camera. When the signal was given, we ran into the living room and there it was!
Underneath the beautifully decorated tree was an oval track with a Lionel 027 scale model train, waiting for me to be the engineer. With a steam engine which would smoke when pellets were placed in the stack, a tender which whistled on command, several cars including a searchlight car, a gray gondola car, a crane car next to a flat car, and a caboose, came a water tower and a cast of metal figurines of cowboys and Indians. When I would twist the control on the big transformer that came with the set, the model train would come to life and circle the oval, whistling and puffing smoke. I was transported to another world which existed only under the tree.
As we were living in a small apartment, it became tradition to set up the model train under the tree every Christmas and to pack it back in its box for the rest of the year. That train was very special to me. When my parents house burned to the ground in the 1980s, the train had been one of the few things to survive the inferno, having been stored in the garage. Unfortunately, some heartless thief, rooting through the ashes before we could get to it, got away with this prized possession and I never saw it again. But the model train bug had found a home.
Around 1960, my parents moved to a rented house in New Jersey where I had a bedroom large enough to host a 4 foot by 8 foot table on which I built an HO scale layout. It was a very different experience than the Lionel. Where the Lionel was a very simple set up which called for much imagination, that HO layout grew with several engines and various routes and sidings. It had trestles, a mountain, trees and bushes, several buildings, and a lake. When we moved from New Jersey to Arizona in 1963, the cars, engines and a few other pieces were packed into boxes and did not see the light of day again until recently. I was fortunate to have brought the cars and engines to California with me before the house in Arizona burned. I still have these and will eventually build another model train layout with them as a core.
My late wife’s father spent his career working in the engineering department of the Union Pacific Railroad. It was always delightful to hear his stories of the challenges the line faced in Utah and Idaho. He presented me with several limited edition prints from the 100th anniversary of the UP and these are framed on my wall. I also have a rare railroad themed oil painting my artist brother created, hung on another wall. These have kept the railroading vision alive for me over the years and I look forward to the day when I have room to build another tiny rail world, this time in Z scale.
