Model Railroad Page

My love of model railroading started when I was eight years old, and old enough to be able to play with electric trains. In 2001, my father built our first layout, which had two mountains with two sets of spiral HO scale track. It was on this layout that I ran my first ever HO scale model train set. I ran this set with a MARC AEM-7 locomotive, a gondola, a C.P.R.R. tub car, a Southern Pacific coal hopper, and an Ely Thomas caboose. In addition, I would acquire many other engines, cars, and coaches in HO Scale.

For the first five years, me and my family would move houses a lot. So keeping the trains and tracks in one place was always a challenge! From August 2002 to July 2003, the train board was reduced to a flat slab, but still ran. However, I would not be able to run the trains again for nearly three years, before my family and I moved from NY to NJ. During that time, I started to get more cars, coaches and engines in addition to what I already had. Better in quality and operational capability.

When we finally had enough space in our then-new basement in 2006, my father and I began to build a brand new layout. This too would be flat, but feature many new things. Like a big bridge, a farm, and a tunnel made from rocks dug up in our backyard! In addition, a new track power spacer system to store engines and trains was also installed.

From 2006 to 2008, our layout only consisted of one table. Then in 2009, we added a second table, therefore expanding operations. As time went by, we built the layout up more and more until we had a town, longer tracks, and an expanded DC track block system to store trains on. The layout collection got so big, that we needed a better way to run the trains. So in 2012, the outside track area was double tracked to help increase capacity. In 2018, the layout was expanded to include a “museum” for older locomotives and rolling stock from years past which used to run on my board. 

You may recognize this layout from the old “RCdash9 Videos” YouTube channel. That’s because it is the old RCdash9 layout, which I used as a way to present the cool things I did with this hobby on YouTube over the years. Link to channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/RCdash9. Though not as prominent as it once was in the late 2000s and early 2010s, some videos of this layout are still online, but are outdated. Videos on this page from 2008 to 2013, shows how I filmed and presented my old layout in a variety of ways. Over the years, I made everything that I could, from short amateurish videos to full scale Pentrex style productions.

As time and interest permits, I will post new videos under the new Empire Of Rails channel.