This is my very first railroad. It is a Marx, O27 scale, that my parents bought me when I was 4. In this photo, I am 8, and the track is still on the floor. Soon it was attached to a 4x8 sheet of plywood.

You can't tell by the photo, but I hadn't developed my love for the Santa Fe yet (engine was NYC of all things). I was destined to model the Santa Fe Railroad growing up in Hutchinson, KS, on the Santa Fe mainline. As a child I rode the Santa Fe several times to Kansas City, a couple of times to California, and once to Chicago.

While I was in junior high, I sold the train to finance an HO railroad. I built various HO layouts over the years, largest was probably 4' x 20'. Like most, my modeling took a back seat to cars and girls in high school. During college, I was a typical armchair model railroader. After college, got married, moved to Kansas City and worked for IBM. Did a little modeling, but not a whole lot. Was working a decent sized layout in the basement, when (1974), IBM transferred me to Houston. Unfortuantely there are no basements in Houston, but I couldn't get the model railroading out of my blood. So I sold the HO and started into N Scale. At that time, N Scale was still fairly new, didn't run that reliably, but it was still model railroading! You couldn't get me out of N Scale today!