When I was a kid, my dad built a 4 x 8 HO layout in the basement. If was on counterweights and folded up against 1 wall. It was a western motif with mountains and cattle yards. He could run two trains around the outer loops while switching in the cattle yards. It was awesome. I always figured he'd give it to one of my younger nephews. I went to visit him one day a couple years after my mom died and it was gone. He sold it without asking any of us if we or our kids would like it.
Great memories, though.
When I was about 8 or 9 years old, one of my friends down the block started getting into Lionel trains. His dad was a salesman for Sears and decided to go whole hog on a layout. They had a space in their basement about 24'x12' and built a platform about 3-4' high with a cutout area in the middle. You'd duck down, climb under it, and pop up in the middle to operate it. I recall 3 transformers on each side, and 2 transformers on each end, so you could run up to 10 trains at a time.
They built all the structures and landscaping and then they hired my mom and dad to paint their scenery. My mom painted the scenery on the three walls. Very realistic and perspectively accurate. My dad painted the sky on the ceiling. He made the sun in a cutout over a small exterior window. When they were showing it off to the owners, we turned out the lights in the basement. My dad had painted all of the constellations with glow in the dark paint, and the sun turned into the moon with all the craters and such. It was the Sistine Chapel of train layouts. :laughing:
Several years later, they had to move to Ohio. They sold the entire layout and said they were switching to HO at their new house. They moved and I never saw them again. That's the first kid that moved away from our neighborhood. More left over the years when their parents would move, however, most left when they grew up and went away to college and never came back. Their parents would eventually sell the big houses and move away. I found it really hard to watch them all go. I was one of the last of probably 25 kids to leave. My mom passed away 3 years after I got married and moved out. My dad 7 years after that. When I sold his house, I found my Lionel train still in the original box in a closet and remembered the small layout my dad had made me for it that we kept under my bed. He built it on a trundle bed frame, so I could roll it out and lift it up to play height. I'd forgotten about that up until then. I still have it and all the good memories that go along with it of playing with trains with my father.
