Getting into model railroading

I can remember getting my first model railroad set like it was yesterday. It was a simple circle with a single spur for staging rolling stock. I would spend hours watching a small train go in circles....as you can tell I was easy to please. This "layout" stayed at my grandparents house on their pool table, for what reason it had to stay there is unknown to me.

As I began to get older and my mind became more creative, I wanted to expand my simple circle into something more. Something that would allow for a longer train to be operated and this is when my love for model railroading started. In my parents basement I turned this circle layout to layout that was more oval. I began adding structures, paper mache tunnels, poster board streets with micro-machines cars and more staging areas for rolling stock to sit. As I made the layout bigger with more structures, more rolling stock, train stations, bridges and an amusement park, I took over half of the basement. At this point I thought I had the best train layout in the world and I was hardly a teenager.

Then one day it all changed.......I realized that I could build a better looking layout. My childhood best friend, Justin, that lived three houses down from me shared the same interest in model railroading. So our summers and weekends were spent working on his layout and mine. When we got hold of some Model Railroader magazines and frequent visits to Altoona Shops to expand our layouts, we started to learn more about the art of model railroading.

By the time I was in high school (1995), I had scrapped everything I basically had in my first big layout in order to start fresh. I found a simple track plan for 4' x 8' layout. I was going to do this right...build sturdy framework for the layout, have structures that needed painting and assembling and turnouts that could be operated from my control area. After years of on and off again work during my high school years, I was very proud of my layout:

This layout had everything I wanted it to have and more. I had operating street lights, buildings that were painted by me and lit up, homemade trees, a bridge and control panel.