Old Timers' Reminiscing

[richg]

I have two sets of Marx 0-27 with 0-4-0 that I use to run at Christmas. Those all metal are really loud. I run the plastic 1970's Lionel at Christmas now.

Rich

[Jerrys HO]

I have a Marx 0-27 set given to me in the early 80's by one of my dad's friends. Don't know how old it is but it still works! I have an S-gauge set from the early 50's that my brother had gotten for X-Mas when he was a youngster. And I have the Lionel set that got me started in model RRing.

I was never into HO growing up so over the years had aquired a lot of O. Having watching the HO scale evolve into DCC over the last couple of year's I decided to read up on this. I am one who likes's to tinker and never turn down a good challenge. I just turned 50 going on 10 again.

I have been building my first HO layout for about 2 years ( took a while to sell off most of my O stuff) and it has been a blast. Everything is Bachmann issue except one loco.

Many thanks go out to the "Old Timer's" on this board which has helped me and other's convert to HO or just simply get started. You guy's are the best even though some may have different opinion's every now and then.

Jerry

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

I just turned 50 going on 10 again.

I like that way of thinking. 

[jward]

i grew up in a family of railfans and model railroaders. my grandfather once showed me a double slip switch he'd built back in the late 1940s. he used cardboard for ties, and bird gravel for ballast. there was also something called midlin track. it was a system of handlaying track which used rails with a flange on the bottom. you could buy balsa wood ties with grooves cut into them for the rail flanges. it made laying your track almost as easy as using flex track.

http://americanoo.blogspot.com/2008/06/midlin-track.html

i guess i am an old head now, i'm 47, but have been in the hobby my whole life. but the true old timers, the ones modelling around ww2 or sooner, were craftsmen. they had to build everything, usually from scratch. and they were an ingenious lot we could learn so much from, if they were still with us. fortunately, we have the old model magazines with their articles on building your own locomotives and buildings.

[ebtnut]

One of the true great craftsmen of the '40's and early '50's was Mel Thornburgh.  He was a B&O fan, and wrote a number of construction articles on scratch-building locomotives using most common tools.  In those pre-lost wax days, a lot of detail parts were made by turning down brass rod.  Those with a lathe could do the job fairly easily, but Mel used a standard hand-cranked drill.  Chuck the rod in the bit, clamp the drill in a vise and start cranking.  Small files were used to shape the piece.  Tedious, yes.  But for those folks making $100 a week, it was what you did.  A couple of Mel's models are featured in the B&O Musuem in Baltimore. 

Something else to spark some memories - U.S. OO scale.  HO and OO sort of duked it out for supremacy in the late '30's and '40's.  Lionel had line of OO models including a very nice NYC Hudson.  U.S. OO (double-oh) had a track gauge correct to the scale, unlike OO in the UK which used (and still uses, in large measure) HO gauge track.  Although OO was essentially gone by the early '60's, its vestiges linger on.  The track gauge was 3/4", which O scale modelers of that period recognized as 3 foot narrow gauge in 1/4" scale.  If you look on an NMRA standards gauge today, it still says OO/On3. 

[phillyreading]

Years ago, around the 1940's and 50's you had to build a lot of stuff by hand, most buildings were out of reach of the common man because of high prices.

A place that has handbuilt houses and other O gauge size buildings is "Roadside America" in Shartlesville PA, near Hamburg and Allentown, and is open to the public.

Lee F.

[CNE Runner]

One of the great things, about threads such as this one, is that it gets the 'memory juices' flowing. After telling of my first locomotive being an Athearn Little Hustler [Desertdweller, I laughed when you compared the Little Hustler to a Sidewinder missile...so true, so true.] I decided to do a 'Google' search to see if I could find any pictures of the beast. Lo, and behold, I not only found a picture/description; but the picture was an exact image of the model I once had.

I remember replacing the rubber bands with ones gotten from my orthodontist's office as they were the same size. As Desertdweller mentioned with a top speed of 200+ mph, this was a poor choice as a switching locomotive.

Ray

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

A place that has handbuilt houses and other O gauge size buildings is "Roadside America" in Shartlesville PA, near Hamburg and Allentown, and is open to the public.

Lee F.

Is "Roadside America" still around? My mom and dad took me to see that when I was a boy in the '60s. We visited "Roadside America" on our way home from taking a ride on the steam train of the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, "The Hawk Mountain Line." In those days the engine at the WK&S was a 2-6-2 from down South somewhere that I believe later went to the Wolfeboro Railroad in New Hampshire.

[RAM]

Yes Varney steam locomotives were great until they came out cheap 4-60 and 2-8-0.  The super locomotives came in four boxes.  You could buy one box at a time.  $49.99 was a lot of money at that time.  old Mantua loop-and-hook worked great.  however if one car fell off the layout it would take the whole time with it.

[phillyreading]

A place that has handbuilt houses and other O gauge size buildings is "Roadside America" in Shartlesville PA, near Hamburg and Allentown, and is open to the public.

Lee F.

Is "Roadside America" still around? My mom and dad took me to see that when I was a boy in the '60s. We visited "Roadside America" on our way home from taking a ride on the steam train of the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, "The Hawk Mountain Line." In those days the engine at the WK&S was a 2-6-2 from down South somewhere that I believe later went to the Wolfeboro Railroad in New Hampshire.

I was up to see it about seven years ago and it is still around. Has an amazing layout in O gauge. Roadside America is off of I-78, between Hamburg and rt. 183, or on old rt. 22 that runs from Hamburg to Shartlesville.
One of my grandmothers(Sophie Deeds) used to know the original owner and builder of Roadside America. I would have to search for info about the name of the man who built it. Anyway it is modeled after Berks County for landscape.

If you are interested there is an O gauge club near Frackville PA, north of Hamburg on route 61 near route 83.

Lee F.

[phillyreading]

If you go to Allentown PA, check out the nearby city of Jim Thorpe, home of the leftovers from the Reading RR, a.k.a. Reading & Northern RR, now a regional RR. Even have a short line passenger service there.

Lee F.

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

A place that has handbuilt houses and other O gauge size buildings is "Roadside America" in Shartlesville PA, near Hamburg and Allentown, and is open to the public.

Lee F.

Is "Roadside America" still around? My mom and dad took me to see that when I was a boy in the '60s. We visited "Roadside America" on our way home from taking a ride on the steam train of the Wanamaker, Kempton & Southern, "The Hawk Mountain Line." In those days the engine at the WK&S was a 2-6-2 from down South somewhere that I believe later went to the Wolfeboro Railroad in New Hampshire.

I was up to see it about seven years ago and it is still around. Has an amazing layout in O gauge. Roadside America is off of I-78, between Hamburg and rt. 183, or on old rt. 22 that runs from Hamburg to Shartlesville.
One of my grandmothers(Sophie Deeds) used to know the original owner and builder of Roadside America. I would have to search for info about the name of the man who built it. Anyway it is modeled after Berks County for landscape.

If you are interested there is an O gauge club near Frackville PA, north of Hamburg on route 61 near route 83.

Lee F.

I'm glad to know it's still around. I haven't been up that way in years. I remember as a child being very impressed. 

[Johnson Bar Jeff]

One of the great things, about threads such as this one, is that it gets the 'memory juices' flowing. After telling of my first locomotive being an Athearn Little Hustler [Desertdweller, I laughed when you compared the Little Hustler to a Sidewinder missile...so true, so true.] I decided to do a 'Google' search to see if I could find any pictures of the beast. Lo, and behold, I not only found a picture/description; but the picture was an exact image of the model I once had.

I remember replacing the rubber bands with ones gotten from my orthodontist's office as they were the same size. As Desertdweller mentioned with a top speed of 200+ mph, this was a poor choice as a switching locomotive.

Ray

Kind of a cute little thing, though. 

[Desertdweller]

Yes, it was cute.  A company, I think it was Ernst, made an aftermarket gear drive for it that would maybe have made it usable.

My favorite HO "critter" was the 0-4-0ST Dockside.  These were based on a B&O prototype.  I think this model was first produced by Varney in the 1950's.  AHM imported and sold lots of these that were made by Rivarossi.
I've read the B&O locomotive was a lightweight design made for switching on tracks laid on docks.  But lots of similar locos were used in industrial applications all over the country: mines; lumber railroads; factories.

Les

[CNE Runner]

Now that I RE-look at it - that Little Hustler was kinda cute. Perhaps, with a NWSL power truck and lots of mechanical ability, one could make that locomotive into a decent switcher. Grandt Line sells a GE 25 Ton locomotive kit that resembles the Hustler. Hmmm, I just may keep my eyes open at the local Spring train shows for one of those Little Hustlers...'should be really cheap and a good basis for upgrading.

As far as favorite critter, I would go with the Mantua 0-6-0T ('looks neat; but is a piece of junk) or the Bachmann Spectrum GE 45 Ton ('looks neat and runs like a fine timepiece). I would love to see Bachmann redesign their Plymouth not-really-a-Model MDT as a WDT/6 with a decent Bachmann power truck underneath. [To the Bachmann 'design team': a Plymouth MDT is a four-wheel locomotive whilst the WDT has 6 wheels...like your model.] Realistically, I guess there isn't enough demand, nor profit margin, to ever hope that will happen...one can dream though.

Ray