What is a three railer?
Model Rail Road O Scale (1:48) that has three rail tracks the toy train runs on, with the middle rail supplying power to train. The two out side rails are the no-load neutral. Joshua Lionel came up with the design before WWII, is uses low voltage AC current. (HO scale has two rails and run on DC current)
- The more recent two rail O Scale modeling is new and more realistic. But it has high expense and higher price tags generally, due to model wanting to be more realistic. (these are not toys..)
How I got started
Growing up as a young child had a Marx O scale set that was very durable (lots crashed with plastic solders) , later expanded into a two Lionel trains sets. Having the initial Marx set was rough with limited expansion option with Lionel sets (Y connection couples), just the tin track and village stations/builds were shared between brands.
Later I purchased two Lionel sets on mid 1970 that had limited features. Nagging questions the the Lionel sets quality created in late 1970, they generally had limited features for a high price. Lionel factories were moved to US mid-west with high cost labors. My view was that Lionel entry slide of the O scale market was dropped and its focuses was on high end high priced sets. {away from toys over to collectible status}
I was able to go to local train stores and pick some high end freight cars with metal wheels and full operating couples. For the first time I was able to see all high end premium engines in the store listed for approx. $200 ( what kid can afford that) With paper route money I would go to the train hobby shop every six to nine months with my mom (dad was not big fan).
Initial Childhood Layout (pike)
In middle school years, I was able to build a 4 x 8 set in middle school that sat on a ping-pong table. I used the modified figure eight Lionel set 0 layout that was on the trestle box ( pic below ). There were limitations on which trains/consist could dependably climb the incline. I was able to used wood/ chicken wire and paper mache to build mountains on one part of the layout. I did gain skills on wiring and the need to power switches separately away from track power ( false change in engine direction)
** Trestle Layout on box
Post College
While on Ebay back in the late 1990's I was looking through the various listings. The train collect collection section was found and and I was amazed in the the listings present. It was whole train hobby shop with both new and old items. I was able to see all of my childhood collection in one night, all inventory came to approx. $450 in value. I was quite insulted but was glad to see some items and some memories came back. {Trains were packed in parents house attic for many years.}
Building a Collection
I started to collect items while living in Hoboken in an apartment, had items shipped to parent house for Ebay auctions. My general rule was $60 a week spent on items, most of the fun was winning auction for the lowest price. At that time on Ebay you could lookup who was bidding and the other items that person was bidding on. It quickly became apparent those sellers who were colluding and driving up prices artificially (shilling bidding). I just stayed away from those organized sellers and their listed items, mostly looked for sellers who wanted to empty an old attic. . In addition, finding folks that were bidding on like items of mine open the path other low cost items.
Items Collected - Post Modern ( 60s-90s), have limited interest in steam power
- Conrail
- Amtrak
- LIRR
- C&O
- Erie Lackawanna
- later Penn RR
- NJ Transit
- D&H - TBD, no items collected
{Need to buy only rolling stock that runs on 054 curves and 042 curves, cannot fit 072 curves in my space.}
Second Layout Built
After reading multiple journals and magazines, here is the layout designed (9.75 ft x 12 ft) with three/four loops and an incline to reach all the tracks. I used the RR Tracks software to fit the layout into the desired foot print size and calculate the inclines.
- Tracks black, blue, pink and green (elevated) are the main running loops
- Tracks yellow and maroon are the incline
- Designed with minimal switches to reduce train issues
