We are going to move. We have a contract on our home. We have started planning and packing. Much of this is very exciting. I will be reunited with my wife and family after a year. It has been a good weekend, and there are many happy and exciting things. But not today.
Today, I packed my trains.
Trains have a strange place in my life. One of my very earliest memories is of my father coming home with wooden, snap-together trains. I remember playing with them on the floor of the foyer in our first home, in Merion. I was between 3 and 4 years old. And I remember the S gauge layout my father built on a ping pong tabletop in our basement. He made a loop with a single cutoff. We had a steam engine and perhaps 6 cars. In 1968 my Mt. Ranier mountain model made it onto the middle of that table, the only scenery it ever had.
In 1969 my father and I went to Tom Thumb model hobbies in downtown Philadelphia, right after Christmas. He allocated 100.00 to buying new trains. He advised buying N gauge trains, as they were smaller and a larger layout could be made than with HO gauge. We bought an Atlas track plan book and a starter set with an ATSF engine and a few cars. And then we bought the track. My father did not want to use plywood. Instead, he set up a hollow core door on top of two old dressers in my room. He could barely climb the stairs by that point because he was so ill, but he came up to help set up the door, something we did together.
And the next to last thing we ever did together. The last was we saw a movie together in King of Prussia, driving out to see 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'.
I worked on the trains, setting up track and trying to do wiring. He was too sick to come upstairs, but gave me advice from his chair. And I bought a couple of scenery items, a station and a water tower.
On the day he died, at the time he died, I was in Tom Thumb Hobbies with my mother and sister, looking at train items.
After he died, I wrote out a 'plaque' on index cards, dedicating my little railroad to his memory. On those cards I put what remains one of my favorite phrases- 'Remember, passerby, that here the Spartans remained loyal to their laws', the words on the memorial to the Spartans at Thermopylae. I don't know to this day why I wrote that. I do know that I still have those cards, one of the few items I have kept through the years, buried deep in a box no one ever sees.
That layout never progressed. I could not wire it through the hollow door and with dressers underneath. But when we moved to Atlanta I thought it might be fun to build a RR. In retrospect, I believe I was motivated by becoming a father for the first time. In my world, fathers, good fathers, bring trains for their children. So I bought a piece of hardboard and put together a frame using a hammer and a simple saw. And I nearly cut off the tip of my thumb building it. I got it to run, and I designed the track layout myself, a masterful example of arrogance and inexperience triumphing over common sense. I bought an engine, and perhaps 10 cars. It was 1991.
I still have all those cars and that engine.
That miserable hardboard layout did not survive going into the home we built. We ended up moving to Knoxville, by which time I had a son a bit older than I was when my father introduced me to trains. On Saturdays I would take my children for donuts, and often to look at real trains, hanging onto a bridge on Sutherland Avenue. And so I decided to build another layout. This time I used a track plan book, and my then little son helped me build it. I have an item in my office still where he said in school that he liked to work on trains with his Dad. I treasure that. For all my failings, I have written proof that my son enjoyed that with me.
We got that layout to run, but it did not live through my divorce from and remarriage to Kim. I did learn a lot about building in N gauge, however, and still have a few buildings from that layout.
And about 6-7 years ago, in the home we have now sold, and when my son was about the age when my father and I bought trains, I again wanted to build a layout. This one I designed myself, now with experience of building fine models and furniture. It was a grand layout, with over a scale mile of mainline track, two yards and a freight siding. I bought numerous model buildings and built them all. My son turned out to be an ace at making rocks out of styrofoam, and our handiwork looked good. I designed a wiring system for it, tested it, and built a control panel for 4 controllers at once over 14 track blocks. The wiring and other electrical equipment cost more than 800.00 including the transformers.
But that layout was site specific. It can not move to Chattanooga. And so today I packed the trains- 7 engines, 60 cars, a complete replica of the Broadway Limited passenger train, 4 stations, 6 houses, a complete town, half a dozen factories, scratch built AC systems and water pipes. I took down the table I designed and built, and I saved the rock formations my son made, packing them against a day when I might build another layout.
I had to tell my son what I had done. I hugged him, and told him I had saved his rocks. He said it was OK, and that we could make another layout. I hugged him, and kissed the top of his head, a rare act by me, and turned away so he would not see my tears.
I am glad I have lived long enough to interact with my son like that. But I am desperately sorry to disappoint him as I know I have. I have failed as a father and as a son. I have never really completed a train layout. I hear the ghostly sound of my father's disappointment, and I see the very real pain of my son.
I hope I live long enough to do better. And I hope in the world to come that I will see my layouts whole and undamaged, operating and finished, with a smiling father waiting to hug me and tell me that I have done well after all. And I hope that my son and I will finish a layout together, and that I can give him joy and approval while I live.
Because right now, I don't feel like I have done any of those things.
Ted
Today, I packed my trains.
Trains have a strange place in my life. One of my very earliest memories is of my father coming home with wooden, snap-together trains. I remember playing with them on the floor of the foyer in our first home, in Merion. I was between 3 and 4 years old. And I remember the S gauge layout my father built on a ping pong tabletop in our basement. He made a loop with a single cutoff. We had a steam engine and perhaps 6 cars. In 1968 my Mt. Ranier mountain model made it onto the middle of that table, the only scenery it ever had.
In 1969 my father and I went to Tom Thumb model hobbies in downtown Philadelphia, right after Christmas. He allocated 100.00 to buying new trains. He advised buying N gauge trains, as they were smaller and a larger layout could be made than with HO gauge. We bought an Atlas track plan book and a starter set with an ATSF engine and a few cars. And then we bought the track. My father did not want to use plywood. Instead, he set up a hollow core door on top of two old dressers in my room. He could barely climb the stairs by that point because he was so ill, but he came up to help set up the door, something we did together.
And the next to last thing we ever did together. The last was we saw a movie together in King of Prussia, driving out to see 'On Her Majesty's Secret Service'.
I worked on the trains, setting up track and trying to do wiring. He was too sick to come upstairs, but gave me advice from his chair. And I bought a couple of scenery items, a station and a water tower.
On the day he died, at the time he died, I was in Tom Thumb Hobbies with my mother and sister, looking at train items.
After he died, I wrote out a 'plaque' on index cards, dedicating my little railroad to his memory. On those cards I put what remains one of my favorite phrases- 'Remember, passerby, that here the Spartans remained loyal to their laws', the words on the memorial to the Spartans at Thermopylae. I don't know to this day why I wrote that. I do know that I still have those cards, one of the few items I have kept through the years, buried deep in a box no one ever sees.
That layout never progressed. I could not wire it through the hollow door and with dressers underneath. But when we moved to Atlanta I thought it might be fun to build a RR. In retrospect, I believe I was motivated by becoming a father for the first time. In my world, fathers, good fathers, bring trains for their children. So I bought a piece of hardboard and put together a frame using a hammer and a simple saw. And I nearly cut off the tip of my thumb building it. I got it to run, and I designed the track layout myself, a masterful example of arrogance and inexperience triumphing over common sense. I bought an engine, and perhaps 10 cars. It was 1991.
I still have all those cars and that engine.
That miserable hardboard layout did not survive going into the home we built. We ended up moving to Knoxville, by which time I had a son a bit older than I was when my father introduced me to trains. On Saturdays I would take my children for donuts, and often to look at real trains, hanging onto a bridge on Sutherland Avenue. And so I decided to build another layout. This time I used a track plan book, and my then little son helped me build it. I have an item in my office still where he said in school that he liked to work on trains with his Dad. I treasure that. For all my failings, I have written proof that my son enjoyed that with me.
We got that layout to run, but it did not live through my divorce from and remarriage to Kim. I did learn a lot about building in N gauge, however, and still have a few buildings from that layout.
And about 6-7 years ago, in the home we have now sold, and when my son was about the age when my father and I bought trains, I again wanted to build a layout. This one I designed myself, now with experience of building fine models and furniture. It was a grand layout, with over a scale mile of mainline track, two yards and a freight siding. I bought numerous model buildings and built them all. My son turned out to be an ace at making rocks out of styrofoam, and our handiwork looked good. I designed a wiring system for it, tested it, and built a control panel for 4 controllers at once over 14 track blocks. The wiring and other electrical equipment cost more than 800.00 including the transformers.
But that layout was site specific. It can not move to Chattanooga. And so today I packed the trains- 7 engines, 60 cars, a complete replica of the Broadway Limited passenger train, 4 stations, 6 houses, a complete town, half a dozen factories, scratch built AC systems and water pipes. I took down the table I designed and built, and I saved the rock formations my son made, packing them against a day when I might build another layout.
I had to tell my son what I had done. I hugged him, and told him I had saved his rocks. He said it was OK, and that we could make another layout. I hugged him, and kissed the top of his head, a rare act by me, and turned away so he would not see my tears.
I am glad I have lived long enough to interact with my son like that. But I am desperately sorry to disappoint him as I know I have. I have failed as a father and as a son. I have never really completed a train layout. I hear the ghostly sound of my father's disappointment, and I see the very real pain of my son.
I hope I live long enough to do better. And I hope in the world to come that I will see my layouts whole and undamaged, operating and finished, with a smiling father waiting to hug me and tell me that I have done well after all. And I hope that my son and I will finish a layout together, and that I can give him joy and approval while I live.
Because right now, I don't feel like I have done any of those things.
Ted
I know how difficult that was and knew why you didn't go down to do it earlier. As I heard you disassembling it my heart was breaking...for you and me. I originally did not want it to go around that corner and wish I had been more vocal about it. Perhaps we can build again after everything is settled. This is like one long death. Love you-
ReplyDelete...a moving piece. While there is life, there is hope: completing a train layout with your son is STILL within your grasp...and it is a comforting thought to reflect that if there is life after death, then your father will somehow know what you have accomplished...
ReplyDelete-D-