My Model Railroading
The Resurection
In 1999 I renewed my interest in model railroading. Actually, I never really lost interest in railroading model or real. But now I had the space to create a model railroad. In 1999 I moved back to Minnesota from North Carolina. We purchased a house in Coon Rapids Minnesota not far from where I grew up. I had been thinking about N-Scale for some time as I could get much more railroading in a given space than HO Scale. I made the decision and began the massive sell off of all of my HO gear from the 80's on Ebay. I was given an N-Scale train set from Bachman. I knew from my HO Scale days that Bachman was not much better than Tyco. But I set it up and messed around with it. This was my start in N-Scale. By the end of 1999 I had four N-Scale Locomotives.
1. Bachman
ATSF F7
2. Bachman Spectrum ATSF SD40-2
3. Bachman Spectrum ATSF SD40-2
4. Kato BN SD45 (my first quality N-Scale loco)
All three Bachman locos killed themselves in early 2000. I killed the SD45 in mid 2000 by trying to install a decoder. I still have all of the parts and will someday breathe life back into this loco.
I went into a buying frenzy during the first half of 2000 purchasing a few locomotives and rolling stock as well as Atlas snap track. I had a slab of plywood up and running (Ironically the same slab I am now using for the Plywood Central). I then began to plan my first layout. It was being designed to be an N-Scale empire with two operating levels and a staging yard beneath that. It was going to occupy a space of about 14x22 with an aisle way to get to our backyard porch.
While all of this was going on, my marriage also came to end in late 2000. The marriage was in a bad state prior to the move back to Minnesota. As many learn in life, quick fixes and geographical fixes do not work in the long run. Needless to say, my model railroading and many other plans went into the toilet quickly.
I found myself starting over living in a small apartment by October 2000. My trains packed up except for a small oval of track that I would play with every so often in my apartment. I toyed around with some plans that I could fit into my apartment but eventually gave up on the idea.