My First HO Layout in 1987

I posted pictures of my layout on my website beginning when I started it in 2002. I never posted these pictures on my old website, but I am including them now for completion.

Here are two pictures of my first HO-scale layout in 1987. I was six years old. I think my mom took these pictures. This was a 4’x8’ layout my dad started. We did not have it for very long before he sold it to build a bigger and better layout. All of the equipment and most of the structures and vehicles found their way onto the new layout.

The locomotive roster is all Athearn and all Union Pacific, and includes a Cow-Calf set of SW7s, an A-B-A set of F7s, a U28C and a GP7 that my dad custom painted. There is also a Model Die Casting Harriman Baggage and Combine and an old Revell caboose that he also custom painted. The freight cars were chosen to closely match cars from my old Lionel set, which we sold to raise funds for the HO trains. They appear to all be Athearn cars: a Great Northern 40-foot boxcar, a Union Pacific stock car, a Santa Fe 40-foot boxcar, a Pacific Fruit Express 50-foot mechanical refrigerator car, a Union Pacific 40-foot flatcar, and a Union Pacific 40-foot boxcar. That last car may have been custom-painted as well.

Structures included a Rix Products house, a Bachmann Cape Cod house, a Bachmann split-level house, a Bachman ranch house, a Bachmann school, a Bachmann gas station, a Life-Like diner (with whistle sound) a Bachmann fire station, an old Revell depot (repainted by my dad), an AHM farmhouse, a Bachmann barn and a Bachmann factory.