Lets see,

For me I really didn't have any adults in my immediate family with a love of trains. I have one Uncle from Minneapolis who is part of the 261 steam crew though I have only seen him about three times. I guess it could go back to the Thomas years and just something about the raw power of a train. Then the joy of finishing a kit or doing scenery and knowing hey I did that. Also unlike some hobbies Model Railroading after you finish what you build/set up you can actually do something with it in an interesting way. It'll be nice to hear some other peoples stories to, though I am the first

TrainMaster ... Some questions ...

Early Habit

When I was ten my father filled the basement with Lionel trains. I think we kids were the excuse for his layout. At the time I found Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman at the hobby shop, and I started giving Pop those magazines; one subscription was for Father's Day, and the other for his birthday.He was my excuse for getting those fascinating mags. After several moves I now have a basement filled with Lionel, plus thirty years ago I found HO trolleys and then the PRR. Some of the HO is now going in above the Lionel.

DrJolS

I was 9 years old when I got

I was 9 years old when I got my first train set. This was a Maerklin H0 set and it grew over time into a 4x8 layout. My father helped me set it up but he had no interest in trains at all.

Christmas morning maybe in

Christmas morning maybe in 1959 woke up to a Lionel train circling the Xmas tree. The following year woke up on xmas morning with a 4' x 8' piece of plywood in my bedroom with Lionel running up and over and Dad running 2 trains on it.  Never knew he had worked on it in the basement which is where it resided for a few years till we moved.Then another xmas, my g/f now wife got me a small HO Tyco circle set as a senior in college as a joke gift. She had no idea what she set off. Joined a local club in Kenosha, Wi for a couple years then moved back to the Chicago area where I had a friend who owned a train shop and my addiction/hobby took off from there.

Its been fun and its been frustrating, much more fun now as the equipment is so much better. My wife always encourages it. My 2 yr. old grandson likes to run his Thomas at top speed of course. I've met some wonderful people through it.

I'm very interested in TrainMaster's answer. I could not get either my daughter or son to even run a train. But now my daughter has an interest (she's 34) with helping me build the one just started.

TomO

My older brother

My older brother, 13 years older, had an American Flyer set back in the late fifties/early sixties. SF PA locomotive with a bunch of freight cars and a long oval of track. He went off to college in 66, I was 6, and I was allowed to get it out once in a while to run. He came home to find I was taking better care of it than he did by fixing broken track, couplers and such. Got MY first train set at 13, 0-4-0 steamer and cars, and never looked back.

No adult started me...

I have no idea why I got into trains. I think it started with reading Model Railroader at the grocery while my mom shopped. I loved the stories told from the crew's point of view operating on a layout, and all the great pictures. At about 13 or 14 I started to build a layout, finished it about the same time I finished high school, and by then it had to come down. My father was most definitely not the model railroader type. About 35 years later, I started building another layout. I have never rail-fanned. 

Randy

LHS

The local hobby shop always had a layout under construction in the front window and in 1969 (?) there was an MR there with picture of John Allen on the cover with his wry smile. Inside wasn't just toy trains but a work of art! After that I had to have steam and scenery so saved months of paper route money to get started and haven't stop spending since! I loved the little and geared engines but, aside from the Docksider, most were out of reach.

Later I learned that my father had built Ambroid car kits in the 40's when my uncle gave me some that he had saved and put under the Christmas tree every year. My father had never told me. I keep hoping that he will find the hobby again when his health slows him down but, at 80, he still plays tennis several times a week and works in the yard - all that wasted energy :- )

Neil Erickson 

I think it had to do with me liking the older thomas,

,as that actually was an ho/oo railway for filming. I also had the museum of science and Industry then the IRM and some local shows. I Slowly got more into modeling with a trainset quality Athearn. Then recently after reading Model Railroader (after switching over from Garden Railways that my grandparents have been getting me) and now MRH 

My Mother....

My Mother took me on a train ride to Chicago (Santa Fe) when I was very young.  I must have really loved it. Then that Xmas she bought me an AHM double Santa Fe (AA) freight set.  Oh man I can still see it under the tree that morning.  Oh the joy.  She put up an 8x8 table in the den and placed grass and buildings on it for me. I was very young.  Maybe less than 5.  I still remember looking on my tippy toes as the train would go by.  Oh what fun.

I still feel that to this day.  I have never lost it, and I am grateful for that.  Mom passed away 4 years ago. Yesterday was her B-day (4/18).  I love her and I miss her.  But those memories and her are still with me as I build and run trains.  And I hope my son will take that with him as well.

I love this hobby for so many reasons.  But mostly this one. RIP Mom... and thanks

Jim Lowery

Maybe this explains it....

I blame my parents!  

Kerry

A few different things for me

It's likely any one of these things would have done it for me, but certainly all three sealed the deal.

1) Growing up I lived less than 1/2 mile from the Berlin, CT train station. The station was originally built in 1900 by the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad, and railfanning there with my dad in the 50's and early 60's is a great memory. My first layout about 20 years ago was HO with the New York Central and New Haven railroads from that era.

The station looks pretty much the same today as it did then:

2) My father had a ton of Lionel stuff. I can remember in our first four room ranch house at around 5 years old years old (1956) playing with him. He would set up all the track he had on the floor and stretch it from the living room on one end of the house to my bedroom on the other end. We'd send stuff back and forth for hours. All of the engines were steam. Sadly, I don't know where any of it is today. That's a long story not meant for this forum.

3) He gave me my first train set - an A. C. Gilbert American Flyer Overland Express along with a lot of track for it. Eventually we built a layout for it on a couple of 4 x 8's in the basement. I ran that thing constantly until I migrated to 1/32 slot cars in the mid 60's.

It's been set up under my Christmas tree every year since I've been married (43 years next month) except for about four years just after I took down my HO layout in the basement when I ran my NY Central stuff around the tree. It's been back to the Overland Express now for about ten years.

I take it completely apart to clean it about every four years. It runs a lot for about 1 1/2 months every year under the tree. It still smokes! I even still have the original transformer.

There is a date stamp under the cab that can be seen when you take it apart that says 'May 1958'. My guess is I received it for Christmas that year or the year after.

My family room is 24 x 24, the tree is about 12' tall and the platform I built for the 'village' is 5' x 10'. Here's a photo of about 1/3 of it from 3 years ago. I've since added to the village - if I remember I'll post updated photos this Christmas. All of the street lights operate, as well as a lot of other LEDs on some of the stuff.

A mix of influences in the 50s

My grade school buddy's father was a toy salesman, so he had the entire Lionel catalog in his basement. There was no permanent layout, we just ran track all over and had to put it away for laundry day. My folks got me an American Flyer for Christmas when I was maybe 8. That was an oval with a couple of switches that I would set up in my room. I'd make trackside structures with erector set and American Plastic Bricks (US predecessor of Lego).

My older brother built model planes (he eventually became a fighter pilot) so naturally I did too. Also military models, cars, anything that sold for $1.99 or less. My LHS (right next to the theater with the 25¢ Saturday matinees) had a display layout and a good stock of railroad supplies. By the time I was a teenager, I had gravitated to that side of the store.

There was plenty of real railroading in town, but I didn't pay much attention.

pqe

I grew up with relatives

I grew up with relatives working on both the Northern Pacific and the Milwaukee Road. I had a Lionel train at about 6, but when I was around 10, I got to start riding in the cabs of diesel, steam and electric locomotives. That's all it took. I abandoned the Lionel trains because I didn't like the center rail.

My relatives brought me HO scale trains that they picked up in their travels and I had a nice spot in the back of my dads shop that I had to build a fairly decent size layout.

I went into the Navy for 6 years and needless to day, there's not any room for a layout on a destroyer, but I always had interest in the hobby and kept up with it by reading model railroad magazines.

When I got out, I was stuck living in an apartment and did build a small N scale layout which I could slide under a bed. When I finally moved home to Montana, we built a house with a good size basement where I expanded my little N scale layout into a mini empire with around 11 scale miles of main line track. This was in the late 70's and unfortunately, the N scale locomotives of that time period weren't what I would call the best.

The N scale layout was torn out and my present HO scale layout was started.

N Scale, then Tuolumne Forks

I was interested in trains as a child based on taking the SP "commute" line to San Francisco from the mid-Peninsula in the early 1970s. By that time SP, not really wanting to provide the service, was occasionally running ancient Harriman coaches behind GP9s and I still remember what the leatherette seats felt and smelled like. Over the "hill" near Santa Cruz was the narrow gauge Roaring Camp & Big Trees; Dad took pictures of me next to one of the Shays that is still in service. Then he gave me a Minitrix N scale set as a birthday gift around 1975. The next summer, "Bicentennial" scheme locomotives started appearing, and I saved up my allowance and got one. I also built my first N scale layout that summer outdoors under a covered patio against the back of the house; it was about 3' x 6' with a tunnel, a branch on a grade that reached a mine, complete scenery and 4 electrical blocks. Pretty good for a 12-year-old with almost no tools. But what really got me hooked was an issue of MR from about 1978 with Bob Brown's Tuolumne Forks Lumber Co. on the cover. The use of a restrained color palette, weathered track, and all that "junk" detail was transformational. I immediately started scratch building cars and structures but, sadly, none of those survived a move away to college a few years later. What's more, Bob lived in my home town. A year or two later, maybe 1980, I found out the layout was open for an NMRA convention, probably from an MR ad, so I showed up and Bob let me see if without registering for the convention. Now I'm 51 and I've never looked back. Thanks, Dad.  Thanks, Bob.

Trainmaster ... do you railfan the prototype?

I have to agree Joe, it was

I have to agree Joe, it was models that got me into trains, not the prototype. I was an oops baby. I know this because my parents went to great lengths to assure me I wasn't a mistake, that I was wanted. Well, I am 10 years younger than my next oldest brother, and my father was building a layout in the spare room. The room that ended up being mine, so he had to tear the layout down, that tells the tale for me. Anyway, my father was into model railroading and tried to get my brothers involved. Beyond a mild interest, they never took to it. 

On the other hand, I was fascinated with anything my father did and spent hours with him at his workbench as he tinkered with models. Then I discovered his collection of Model Railroader going back to 1950. I was hooked. He also had a collection of Trains magazine but that didn't interest me as much as the models.

The funny thing is, we had the CPR line running right by our apartment building but I was never interested in it. I was fascinated with steam and that couldn't be seen running by my house. Also, it was mostly passenger, commuter trains from downtown Montreal headed to the west island and of course The Canadian and The Ocean. I have always preferred freight. I regret now not paying more attention to the prototype when I had the chance.

I continue to model trains because of that fascination with miniaturization. I have tried cars, planes and other things but I return to the trains always. Dad has been gone many years now but I still think of him often and my modeling choices are heavily influenced by him.

My interest came in the form

Yeah,

,I would say the model interest came first. Now i would never turn down a chance to see the prototype though i do like Modeling the most.

Joe

If you had asked me to choose which came first in my mind, I would say my dad's Lionel trains. That's what got me excited to go see the real thing and not the other way around.

I've never intentionally gone railfanning since, although if I'm accidentally in a spot where I can do so, I do, and will take pictures as well.

Don't know why it would be any different for someone new to the hobby today.

Lionel Train Layout In the1950's

For Christmas dad bought my brother and I a Lionel train set when we were 5 and 3 years old.  We were fortunate to have a permanent basement layout until we grew tired of it high school.  My dad worked the 2nd shift at a local plant when I was growing up, so I only saw him on weekends during the school year.  However every winter on the weekends we worked on the layout especially heading toward the holiday season.  Back in those days any additions to the layout were built with hand tools.  That's how I learned to use hand tools like a saw, screw driver, drill brace, etc.

I even had my own kid size tool box which I passed onto my son many years later.  In fact when my son was just two years old we traveled to our first train show at a mall where I first saw a modular HO layout.  I instantly became hooked on scale model railroading, and have been active in HO for almost 40 years.

if you love to work with your hands and mind, I can't think of a better hobby

Frank

Models then the prototype

I've been in the hobby since the late 1960s and it started with the models first. I was never a railfan, although the big guys did run right past our house so I couldn't miss them. But it was my fascination with the model trains - miniatures that DID something - that was my real passion.

I became interested in railfanning the prototype later, but that hardly came first. I was 12 years old and got to visit a model train hobby shop. I discovered Model Railroader magazine and the journey started. Never bought even one copy of Trains magazine until maybe 15 years later as an adult - and again, it was because the prototype represented bigger versions of my models.

So it's totally possible - even likely - that today's model railroaders will be mostly introduced to the hobby through the models at shows rather than going from prototype to model. Richard Bale, our main News columnist, is in a club in southern Cali and there's a crop of young guys in the club. Almost all of them are into steam - get that? They want to model prototypes they never even saw in service in real life!

I don't buy that you MUST be a prototype railfan first to become a scale model railroader. There's many cases where that's just not true - and it's going to become less and less true these days as prototype trains are encountered less by the public in daily life. Historical modeling holds quite a fascination, so don't discount it! Todays new modelers are very likely to model prototypes they've never seen in real life.

This doesn't stop kids from becoming fascinated with the hobby, however. Certainly didn't stop me and it hasn't stopped Trainmaster247. Need more cases? My grandson Bobby started with Thomas, as did Breanna (15 year old girl on a Scotty Mason podcast a few years back). Breanna was putting a lot of seasoned oldtimers to shame with her scale modeling work, as I recall ... and she started with Thomas as well.

Always been in my blood

Really, this is hard to answer. I think I am more into what I call 3 dimensional art than I am into model railroading. I can appreciate dioramas of almost anything. The Dossin Great Lakes Museum has some really cool dioramas including one of the Edmond Fitzgerald, several HO scale carfloat dioramas, etc.

This has been the case since I was very young.

I was telling my boys last night that, in the early 1980s, I took a canister of Mt. St. Helens ash that my mom had and dumped it into a coal hopper... Ooops! I was in trouble! Hey, I thought it looked cool.  My boys do not seem to share my passion which saddens me a bit...

To that end Joe

I too started with models before the real thing.  There were 2 railroad bridges in the town I grew up in, but I can't ever even remember seeing trains on them.

A collerary to this is how many times have you ridden on a train - and I can say 1 time.  From Lawrence, KS to Chicago, change trains, and from Chicago to Norfolk, VA.  I needed to fill the 1 day gap between end of school and reporting to my ship in Norfolk, and the train took that long.  Reported aboard ship with .20$ left in my pocket.