I have been asked many times how and why I decided to model in N scale. Well, that is an interesting story…
When I first discovered the hobby of model railroading, I assumed I would model in HO scale. No one asks why someone models in HO scale. About 75% of the model railroad market in North America is HO scale. HO is covered most by far in the hobby press, most of the products you see in most model railroad or hobby shops are HO scale–it has been the “standard” in model railroading for many years. Being new to the hobby, all of my knowledge of the hobby came from the hobby press, so I assumed I would model in HO scale.
To that end, I began collecting HO scale products very quickly. The railroad I had gown up with and thus my road of choice at that time was Missouri Pacific. My first purchase in the hobby was a set of special edition Athearn “Missouri Canaries.” The set included a GP38-2 and a GP50, one motored and one dummy, painted in the iconic early 80’s merger paint scheme–lettered for Missouri Pacific but in Union Pacific style and colors after MoPac’s acquisition by UP. This set was my pride and joy for a few years as I prepared for the eventual building of my first layout.
I planned that HO scale layout for about 3 years. I bought more locomotives and rolling stock and worked on various track plans for my available space. I faced 2 major obstacles though. I was in my late 20s and had a very young family, plus I was very early in my professional career. These facts meant that a) I had very little disposable income to work with, and b) I tended to move every 2-4 years. These facts make building a model railroad very difficult.
Three years into my model railroading “career” I was no closer to actually building a layout than when I started. I was about to make my second move since discovering the hobby and my collection of HO scale equipment sat in the original boxes. I was a little frustrated and very much had the itch to do something…anything…in the hobby.
My favorite hobby store at that time was a place called Main Line Trains on Main Street (thus the name) in Blue Springs, Missouri. One day I was browsing around the store and walked past the display case of N scale locomotives, like I had dozens of times before. At that moment inspiration hit! What if I bought a just a little N scale equipment and build a small, portable layout in N scale? I could practice building structure kits, building scenery, and could run some trains on the “temporary” layout until such a time as I could build my “real” layout in HO scale. That day I purchased my first N scale locomotive–an Atlas GP40-2, Union Pacific 912.
Beginning with the purchases I made that day I built my first layout, an N scale 4’x4′ Missouri Pacific merger-era layout (circa 1982) set in a fictional small town somewhere in central Missouri. That layout opened up the world of model railroading to me in ways I couldn’t have imagined. I discovered how much I loved building scenery and structures–both kits and scratch built. It included some switching operations capability and was a lot of fun to operate. I built, tinkered with, and ran that layout for 4 years until a time when I could build my next layout…an N scale 16’x16′ layout. No, that HO layout I had dreamed of was never built. A couple years later I sold all of my HO scale equipment to reinvest in N scale, and I have never looked back. Why I love and have stayed with N scale is the subject for another blog–one I will write soon. And that first N scale locomotive–UP 912–well, it still runs on my layout today, 25 years later (see photo below).
