I think I was 8 years old when I got my first train, a Christmas gift from my parents. It was a Lionel O27 steam train with several freight cars and a caboose. The track had three rails, with the centre rail powered and the two outside rails being the return. My dad built me a 4 x 8 foot train table, on which I assembled the loop.

As time went on, I bought plastic buildings and people, more track, and some switches so I could make sidings.

I built a mountain, populated my little world with home-made trees and store-bought trees and lichen. I had a small town and one station and even a farm.

My Uncle Jack, who lived on the other side of Toronto (so I didn't see him very often), had a very large O27 layout and I loved visiting him.

But eventually, my dad and I decided to replace the O27 stuff (which was very toy-like) with HO equipment (which was much more life-like).

When I got my O27 set, around 1954, I don't think HO was widely available in Canada. I remember that O scale was available, as was OO from England. A friend across the street had a very large Hornby OO layout with all-British carriages and engines, and I was most impressed.

By the time I was a teen, in 1959, HO was everywhere and all the cars and engines and buildings were very nicely done. They were scale models of real equipment, not toys.

My dad, who had been a cabinet maker before World War II (and an RCAF pilot flying bombers during the war) built a large table out of two 4x8 sheets of plywood. We bought some 36 inch pieces of track and to save money, my dad bult a turnout (called a point in the UK). This was very exacting work, but he showed me (age 13) how to solder and file the rails to fit.

However, the price of turnouts came down and I ended up buying the bulk of them, rather than spending many hours fabricating them.

As time went on, I bought more train cars and more engines, and experimented with block control, where you use electrical switches (usually DPDT - double pole / double throw) to switch the electricity from the transformer to a particular block of track.

I remember working on my layout in November 1963 when I heard the announcement on the radio that the American President John F. Kennedy had been shot in Dallas.

The photo above shows a small part of one of my layouts. The mountain was built with window screening supported by wooden blocks, and then covered with plaster and painted. The train is HO-scale narrow gauge, running on N-scale track. I purchased it in Germany in 1965 and carried it around in my backpack for many months until I returned to Canada.

I hope you will find some useful information on this web site to help you with your model railroad.

Doug Anderson

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