Choooooo-chooooo! The Model Train is coming!

My parents gifted me with a set of Lionel model trains when I was about nine. At first, there was a layout around the tree. Then it expanded to a railroad empire. At that time, my dad was the superintendent of the building in which we lived in Washington Heights. We had access to many of the unused rooms and spaces in the basement. So the empire took over one of those rooms.

After I left home, I left model trains behind. But I always took joy in visiting other people’s train layouts, and recalled the days when I ran my own on the basement empire in New York.

I couldn’t even think about model trains when I first started at Boston University as a night student. Housing for myself and my cat was a rented room in a rooming house. It wasn’t until we moved into the funky little enclave in Boston’s Charlestown neighborhood that my mind turned in that direction. The huge loft building was owned by an interesting family that wanted artists in their old factory building. He maintained that not only did we improve the property, but thieves were less likely to break in if they knew the building was occupied.

So went from a tiny room to a loft space. The landlord was grateful when my cat, Clancy, and his buddy Jean Le Foot foiled a thief, bloodied him up, and held him in the bathroom ( on top of the toilet, crying like a baby!) until the police arrived. We were offered the complex’s former office house, a small house for my studio.

The little house soon sported an outdoor garden and frequent cookouts. My guests frequently were the drivers from the trucking companies in the area, and Clancy became a bit of a celebrity with them. A few of the guys liked his tough guy attitude and enjoyed getting into fights with him. Clancy never saw a fight he didn’t like and looked forward to them.

One of the drivers was a model railroader, and we talked a lot about trains. We also headed over to the fence to watch them. The building was adjacent to the B&M railroad, and trains were going back and forth every hour of the day or night. Idle talk led to the suggestion that I might think about looking at some model railroad stuff, and he provided the name of the Eric Fuchs company in downtown Boston that sold model railroad equipment.

Looking at N-scale models led to thinking about where I could build a layout, and that turned out to be the unfinished attic of the little building. It had a drop-down staircase, and Clancy would sprint up there on rodent patrol whenever I’d work on the trains.

Life by the railroad tracks, being woken up by trains at all hours of the night, meant lots of train watching. For Clancy, it meant fights with the seagulls that populated the tracks during the night hours. One or two would walk over to our building, and he and his friend, Jean La Foot, would dispute their right to visit. But the disturbances mean that few of my girlfriends wanted to stay overnight at my place. Too noisy.

Graduate school guaranteed another flip-flop in living accommodations. I was in a small apartment and had no spare money for model railroading. It wasn’t till my lovely bride surprised me with a model railroad set for Christmas the year after we got married that I got into the hobby again.

Oh, and of course, my cats have all over the trains. I am currently building a layout. And Marcus and Sabrina supervise me closely. Track work is all laid, we can actually run trains, but currently we are building the small city of Passimgaskeag, home of the local B&M baked bean factory. Marcus of course has to make sure that everything is operating well: