This pretty much says it all.
My first real model train, Tyco's HO scale Midnight Special set (#7304 - 1976). Thanks Mom! The loco and caboose were lost long ago. The loco had been a spotty runner right from the get go and had long since crapped out. I kept the cars, however. Here's a photo of the 1977 version of this set. The version I had included one more car - a Union 76 tank car. You can see the 1976 version at 4:21 of this YouTube video of catalog pages set to music.
Sweetening things further was the crane car with boom tender. Mine was marked for Santa Fe.
...And a cool Piggyback Flat Car Set that came with an unloading ramp.
And a flat car with a pipe load.
Mom significantly expanded the roster with Tyco's HO scale Steel Hauler (#7323 - 1981). I had all of the rolling stock and the loco from this set until the mid 1990's, when I decided that my dream layout would be in N Scale (1:160). At that point I sold them all online. It would be some additional years before their nostalgic value would occur to me. Now I regret having sold them.
My wife launched my N scale modeling efforts in 1997 with Bachmann's Prairie Flyer set.
This actually led to construction of a small layout, with benchwork, track laid and preliminary scenery, but not too much further than that. Progress fizzled out when I realized that while I had included several sidings, the layout had a limited operational potential. It was fun to watch the trains run, but my changing understanding of what could be done with a layout doomed this project. Also, I found the tiny size of the N scale structures to be daunting. My skills improved as I built more models, but it was still daunting and difficult to both see and handle the tiny pieces and end up with something halfway decent looking. I also realized that there was very little in the way of decently-priced models of steam engines in this scale, especially the smaller, earlier ones that really tripped my trigger. But make no mistake, I had a lot of fun building that layout and learned quite a bit along the way! I fully intended to take it with me to the next residence, then was horrified on moving day to find that while it was narrow enough to fit through the door, it was too long to get up the staircase on the other side. I came back later to try to further dismantle it, but it crumbled in the process and ended up at the curb.
Our new place had no room to dedicate to a railroad, so I began anew with a plan for a shelf railroad that could run around the room just above the door frames. This layout would be built in short sections that could be added to the line, easily moved and easily integrated into a dream layout in the future - the basement/attic full of trains, tracks and highly detailed scenes that most modelers drool over.
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| A scene from George Sellios' amazing Franklin & South Manchester Railroad |
I took this opportunity to jump from N scale back to HO, which would hopefully improve the results I could expect after my clumsiness with the tiny N scale items. Trying to re-rail those wee cars on a shelf over my head seemed like a recipe for headaches.
Another factor in the switch back to HO was the much reduced variety of models and rolling stock available in N scale as compared with HO. By this time I had developed an interest in the Central of Georgia Railway after finding an old stock certificate at a railroading swap meet and I wanted to be able to run all the fantastic looking models that were available in HO but not N.
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| Alco RS-3 by Atlas |
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| Wood/Composite War Emergency Hopper Cars by Athearn |
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| Door-and-a-half boxcars w/ "Money Saver Service" paint |
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| 1932 American Railway Association (ARA) box car by Atlas |
I got a couple sections of this project built, including a small engine shop scene for a corner that came out looking halfway decent.
But another move had been revealed on the horizon, so progress on the shelf layout stopped. But not before I ran across a one-of-a-kind model at Memory Station train shop - a Bachmann Spectrum GE 70 tonner locomotive that had been custom decorated as TFRR #501. And though it had no role whatsoever in my interest in the Central of Georgia and the rail operations in Athens, I bought it anyway - intrigued by this model for the little railroad that ran through my adopted home town of Lakemont and Rabun County.
Some years ago I read one of Tony Koester's "Trains of Thought" columns in Model Railroader where he talked about the story of the "$14,000 caboose". I am not sure about that number, but the gist of it was that a friend had bought a model of a caboose of a favorite railroad although it had no place in the scheme with his well-established and quite large layout. And then it turned out that buying that caboose lit the fuse on a new interest in the old favorite railroad, complete with a whole new body of research followed by the reworking of the entire layout, as well as purchase of a whole new fleet of locomotives, freight cars and passenger cars!
And so it would be for that little locomotive and me! I started to gather information about the TFRR, learning more about the details of its operations and role in the communities it served - far more than I had ever known while actually living there growing up.
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| HO Scale GE-70 Ton switcher by Bachmann, lettering by Louis at Memory Station. For scale, the big wheeled blocks on either side of the model are the motorized drive units that will power the G-scale version of the same locomotive. |
So I begin to hatch a scheme for the dream layout that would tie all of this together - a layout that would depict the railroad that was originally chartered as the Northeastern Railroad of Georgia - a line to connect Athens with Clayton. My dream layout would have one key deviation from the facts of history.
What actually happened was that the Northeastern Railroad of Georgia managed to reach Tallulah Falls before it was acquired by what would become the Southern Railway, whose new line toward Atlanta would cross the NRoG at Cornelia and Lula. After additional manipulations, the upper part of the line would become the Tallulah Falls RR, the lower section would be operated directly by the Southern as a branch off what would become their Washington DC to New Orleans mainline - the route of the Southern Crescent. And very soon thereafter the TFRR would also come under the control of the Southern, where it was always operated it as a subsidiary. 65 years later the Southern would also acquire the Central of Georgia Railway, which gave the Southern a direct connection to Macon and points south without having to pass through Atlanta. The whole thing exists today as Norfolk Southern, less the defunct TFRR.
But in my dream layout's version of history, the Central of Georgia Railway acquired the original Northeastern Railroad of Georgia from the consortium of Athens businessmen at the turn of the 20th century, not the Southern. They would also operate the TFRR as a subsidiary. This one change perfectly united the two railroads - the layout would depict the Central's yard and operations in Athens, the line north to Commerce and then Cornelia, where it would interchange traffic with both the Tallulah Falls and the Southern's Crescent line to Atlanta. The "northern" half of the layout would depict the TFRR's operations to the town of Tallulah Falls, with the line northward above Tallulah Falls existing only as an "off scene" staging yard.
And then I spent a couple years filling notebooks with schemes for making any part of it happen within our modest 2BR/1Ba cottage. Could we dig out the crawlspace - create a new basement? Close in, weatherproof, insulate and finish the attic - currently an open ventilation roof that keeps the rain off the insulated living space? Every possible solution would require huge amounts of money and effort be expended before even the first piece of track could be laid. One night in 2009 I was telling my wife about the shocking cost of a spiral staircase tall enough to span our 10.5 foot ceilings - a bit of research into the question of how to even access the attic given the current lack of a staircase.
And then she changed my life once again, this time by asking, "Don't they make trains that can go outside? We have a big yard - you should put your railroad outdoors!"
And the rest is history!
