Most of us model railroaders recall back to when we had our first electric train set and I do recall the American Flyer train that my parents bought one Christmas. That was a great Christmas! But then I also remember a train that I had before that. It was a wooden train that my father made in his modest basement workshop. It had wooden wheels and something like cup hooks for couplers to hold it together. It really did roll quite well. Maybe he bought the wheels already made.
After I had the American Flyer set for a while, I knew that I wanted to add something to my rolling stock. I had an American Flyer catalog that came with the set, and I looked at it over again and again. Finally I decided what I wanted. I started saving up money from my TV Guide delivery route and when I had $7.95, I was able to buy a crane car for the railroad. It seemed like we had to mail order for it since we lived out in mid western Kansas. There were no hobby shops there. Choosing the crane car was probably not the best choice for my small railroad, but it was a really cool car. Eventually I decided that I wanted to have an HO train set. Since the local railroad in town was the Santa Fe, that was what I wanted. Again I saved my money and when I had about $15.00 I was able to buy either the train set or the transformer. My folks were going on a trip to Hutchinson Kansas, and there was a hobby shop there so I bought an Athearn train set with a Santa Fe F-7 freight loco, assorted cars, caboose and track. On a later trip I was able to buy the transformer and I had my layout started. I did some modest model railroading on a sheet of 4' x 8' plywood, until I left high school for college. Almost all of my train equipment disappeared when I was away in college. Something about a garage sale that my mom had. She was really sorry about it later, but not to worry, I have lots of train stuff now!
During my childhood I do have a couple of real train memories. I remember riding the train to visit relatives. The train was a Santa Fe train, and I remember we spent most of the time in the Superdome car. It was great! I remember seeing the semaphores dropping as we passed them. I remember the air conditioning on these cars was way too much. I also remember visiting a local grain elevator. I and either my sisters or other friends played in the boxcars, which were fixed up for wheat by having sheets of plywood nailed across the opening. They did not have a locomotive there to move the cars around, so a farm tractor with a cable or rope was used to pull the cars back and forth to load them from the storage elevator. The grain elevator manager was a friend of the family, and once he took us to the top of the elevator to look around. You can see a long way in Kansas from one of those elevators. I also remember, it was a little scary, and I was glad to get back to the ground.
About 15 years ago, my wife told me that someone down the street had part of a train set in their garage sale. Would I like to buy it? I guess somehow or another she must have heard me talking about trains or my always noticing trains or something. Anyway, I bought the train, later found some plywood in the basement, and had a simple circle layout going on the floor of the family room. I was hooked again. It just so happened that this was a Santa Fe train again, and I decided to stick with modeling the Santa Fe as it was the railroad I had before, and because it was the railroad that ran through my home town of Larned, Kansas.
I decided to build a small layout in the basement. It was a figure 8 layout with several switches, sidings and track. It had no electrical blocks at all so it was always just one train at a time. I was subscribing to Model Railroader and I noticed that there was a layout tour in the area and I suggested that we go see these layouts. One of the layouts, I think it was maybe in a home on the southwest side of town, was built along two walls of the basement and my wife Loveta suggested that building along the wall would be a more practical way to expand the layout. It also would really take up less space. I tore out the old layout, tried to save some of the wood and started my new layout. This time I used nickel silver flex track, and planned several blocks. This was my second layout. It extended 25' along one wall and curved around in a six foot loop at one end, and an eight foot loop at the other. It had two cab controls, and could run two trains with two loops of track that crossed each other, or with two trains following each other on one loop of track that went around the layout twice before returning to the same location. The scenery was half done, and was somewhat typical of western Kansas or southern Colorado. I have two great friends who came by twice a month to operate trains on the layout, and we have had a swell time running Santa Fe trains and just talking about the Santa Fe Railroad.
In the spring of 2001 my wife and I started talking about making a move and I saw this as an opportunity to look for a house with a bigger basement and an opportunity to build a bigger model railroad. We have made that move and I am currently in the process of designing my new railroad layout but also helping one of my friends to build his layout. My new layout will be designed after a specific section of the original Santa Fe System and choosing the specific area has involved some study of the railroad using maps and personal visits. I can't wait to someday finish the layout and post pictures at this web site.
I should add that participating in the Central Indiana Division of the NMRA organization has been a great experience which has introduced me to some great train folks who have been able to help me learn more about the model railroad hobby, and I consider them a valuable resource. I also enjoy the activities of working with the CID meets, the organization of clinics for the meets, and talking with other modelers. Great fun!
Thomas H. Cain
atsf93@comcast.net
