50th Anniversary Party next week- March 7th

[up1950s]

This is my oldie for the 2 year too early celebration of N Scale . A 1967 Atlas 5 axle C-Liner
 

[wm3798]

Happy Anniversary N scale!  Here's a few from the archive:

My old Trix F unit.  The first custom job for the Laurel Valley, too... a Bicentennial unit! 
There's another Trix F in the background.

Some Bachmann crap masters.  The U-boat, I believe, was my first engine, which came in Chessie
colors (of all things!) in a Bachmann train set.

Actually, the Amtrak Metroliner seen in this shot was my first official train set, but
in classic Bachmann fashion, didn't work at all out of the box.  If I had been more
warranty savvy at age 11, I would have sent it back until I got one that worked.  I
ended up cutting up the car shells in an aborted attempt to make subway cars for some unknown reason.


Here's my matched pair of B&O GP30's, old school Atlas Roco jobs that I had remotored with Kato drives (from JnJ)
and repainted from the original factory Santa Fe livery.


And just to show respect for those 1st generation models, I recently installed a decoder in one of
those GP-30's for Phil Hoffman.  It sounds like a coffee grinder, but it now has directional
lighting and cruise control!

Looking forward to the next 50 years!

Lee

[DKS]

My contribution to the oldie-but-goodie parade (all previously-posted images, but now all in one handy place).

I got my first N scale set in 1968, and it looked just like this:



I bought this on eBay a few years ago purely for the sake of nostalgia--this one is still sealed in cellophane.
 


My first "real" layout, circa 1970:



In 1973 I'd started the first White River and Northern. This is how it looked in its early days, with an Arnold-Rapido 0-6-0 in the foreground--



Over the next couple of years I'd acquired a Minitrix 0-6-0 to replace the poor-running Rapido, which I'd merged with a Minitrix FM to produce a Shay (someday I'll publish an article on how I made this little monster). It's just barely visible immediately to the left of the water tower in this later view of the WR&N:
 


That's about all that's worth posting (such as it is) from my earliest days.

[wcfn100]

Someday I'll get the photo albums from my dad which have hundreds of photo from the late 70's through the 80's from all the shows we did.  Until then, I have the same pic I've been posting for a while.




I'm guessing the photo is from ~1979-1980 from the Northtown Mall show.  My dad made the 2'x'4 box and had to go back to Colorado for work.  It was the first layout I ever did on my own.  Modelers from that time will no doubt recognize "Houses under construction" and "Freight depot with whistle".  The two small 'rock' formations just above the locomotive probably came from the planter behind me in the picture in the form of bark chucks.

The locomotive is a custom Bachmann that my dad did.  I believe the caboose was custom as well.

Jason