No other mode of transportation has ever captured the imagination in quite the same way as trains. Maybe, it’s because they were the first form of mechanized transportation. Whatever the reason, they have been source of fascination and been at the center of war, intrigue and romance since they were invented in the early 1800’s in England. From there, railroads and trains spread to North America and then every continent on Earth (except Antarctica!). And in the process they’ve conquered every kind of terrain: rolling plains, lush grasslands, cathedral forests, dense jungles, jagged coastlines, soaring peaks, plunging canyons and the hearts of railroad fans who’ve wanted to capture just a bit of that majesty and beauty for themselves in their own homes.
It was then that the hobby of model railroading itself was born—well almost. In the beginning (no, not that beginning) there was Lionel—the toy train that started it all for a lot of folks. There was a time that when kids asked for a train for Christmas, a Lionel was what they got because it was virtually the only one available. Oh, there were others: American Flyer or Marklin over in Germany, but Lionel dominated the marketplace.
The trains and cars were of sturdy steel and easy for children to handle. The train track was durable and easy to assemble and to power up. Plus, there were plenty of really cool accessories with plenty of colored lights for everything—signal lights, lights on the controls, you name it. My dad had one of these sets and I looked forward with a combination of excitement and reverence to Christmas when the perfectly-preserved ancient boxes with their 1940s Lionel logos were opened one by one to reveal their ancient treasures inside. There were cars that dumped coal into coal elevators that scooped the coal one little lump at a time and carried it up to the storage area where it waited to be dumped with the press of a button into another waiting car that was hauled away as soon as it was full.
This captivated the kids, but the adults noticed the tracks did not look anything like real train tracks. For one thing, there were three rails—not two like a real train and there were not railroad ties—the wooden cross members holding the rails together. There were just three unrealistically large metal ones instead of several more evenly-spaced and smaller ones. Nobody would ever mistake a skillfully taken trackside photo for the real thing. Also, the size of the Lionel trains were just too big to keep the set up all the time for most people’s houses with wives, kids, and all the other stuff that comes with that.
Then along came a new kind of train that was half the size of Lionel, but with twice the realism. The tracks had just two rails and railroad ties that looked exactly like real deal. It was called HO, or “half-O,” which meant it was half the size of the O-Scale Lionel. We will go into more detail about scale in the first chapter. This is when “playing with trains” really became model railroading. HO trains were actually invented in 1935 in the United Kingdom, but they really gained their popularity in the 1950s in America. From there model railroading has branched out all across the world in dozens of sizes and accessories.
Model railroading is the greatest hobby because it’s so many hobbies in one and teaches you so many things: how to work with your hands, manual dexterity, the elements of design, carpentry, precisely realistic model making, principles of electric wiring, how to create realistic scenery, artistic principles by learning how to paint detailed scenery, how systems work, learn interesting bits of history, how to come up with solutions to different challenges, and, yes, even some computer programming if you choose.
This book takes you on the journey from first selecting a model train and it’s scale through to designing and building a railroad through to soldering and the electronics required.
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