History of my model railroading attempts and layouts in HO and N scale from the 1970s to before my current HO scale model railroad layout.

Ancient History (almost)

I have had a few major model railroad layouts since I started the hobby back in the 1970s: The first one I dont remember very well, except for its warped baseboard! The second was an 8×4 feet layout with a mountain at one end, a station that was way too far from the track to be of any use and scenery consisting of non-scale animals, some trees, and mirrors for lakes. It only had an oval of track, so got pretty boring pretty quick so I added in some other trackage to make it more interesting. Then I had a layout I called the South Eastern Railway and was a freelance Australian railroad situated in the Great Dividing Range in Victoria. Back in those days the only equipment I had was an eclectic mix of Australian and European rollingstock and motive power made by Lima.

The next layout was located on two spare bunks in a caravan and was a staging and station layout wih the basic idea being that the station represented a switchback on a branch line, and the one after that was in a 10 x 7 foot bungalow / shed. I then had a short and (kinda) sweet sojourn in the land of N.

The N scale layout was purchased complete, and included some rollingstock. I added a passing loop on the lower level track, which could hold a train while another ran around the main. The mountain track joined the lower level track, and was a figure eight type of design with a siding, and a diamond crossing where it crossed the lower level track at grade. This layout was quite fun to operate. But I felt everything was just too small in N scale, so I went back to HO scale.

From that time on, I chose to model American outline, because of the amount of equipment available ready to run. And it was at that time that the first Piedras and Reddy River RR, my next series of layouts, was built.