Hi everybody! Thanks for havin me!!! I’m Chris. Just a grown man who likes to play with trains in his basement. Been snoopin around on here for a while now so I’m pretty sure I’m in the right place. Anyways…I’ll try to keep it brief for now. Like many of you, I grew up in a house with trains. My dad has enjoyed the hobby his whole life and is a talented modeler himself. I on the other hand found other interest throughout much of life and now at 48 I’m about 5 years deep in this crazy obsession. I built a couple simple layouts in the first couple years and explored my taste in the hobby through trial and error. All the while building inspiration from so many great modelers whose work I enjoy on here and other sharing media. Then about two and a half years ago (right in the heat of Covid) we moved into a new house in the ucity part of St. Louis with a basement that I felt was magically built a hundred years ago with just my needs in mind. Once the ‘responsible’ part of the house was pretty well settled in I went right to work with the intent of making as detailed and story telling of a 3 rail o scale layout as I could in basically a 24x15 space. That was around this time of 2020. So now I’m 2 years into my project. I seem to get pretty good feedback from folks who see it personally and my buddy has put it on his YouTube train channel a couple times with some really nice comments. I think it even snuck on here once maybe twice. I’m a pretty private person by nature and not into social media much at all so this is new and a bit awkward honestly for me. I know there’s different themes for different days but since it’s my first I thought I’d cover a few at once. So here’s a brief overview. (I know I said that earlier but) My collection of rolling stock is from most of the makers but leans mostly toward Atlas. All powered units are Lionel or K-Line. Nothin against any of the others just decided to pick one operating system and stick to it. I like simplicity. Almost all are USRA NYC and all pre 1937 as that is the theme of the layout. I do have a small modern collection but maybe we’ll get to that later. The layout is basically 20x12. It has 3 O scale loops with the ability of making 2 of them into a reverse loop and an on30 logging loop on the mountain. It’s all Gargraves Phantom track bent by hand with I believe 29 manual and 2 powered Gargraves switches. I’m not quite a rivet counter but I do try to keep the theme and era as real as possible although plenty of artistic license is at play. Well…here’s a start! Please ask any questions and let me know what ya think. Happy to show and share anything. Any suggestions or criticisms are not only welcome but encouraged. Hope you enjoy and that I wasn’t too windy.
Thanks for l👀kin!
