Gallery of Modeling Products that Take Me Away
These are the N Scale products that firmly captured my attention in my youth, and still to this day make me pause and remember the thrill I felt back in those days. They fired my imagination and stirred my blood and inspired me to model.
Although it's not an N Scale product, it happens to be a product that got me to pursue model railroading as a serious hobby. In particular, an image in this issue—the first modeling magazine I ever bought—really captivated me.
Here's the product that got me into N Scale: the venerable Aurora Postage Stamp train set. The flood of memories that pour out of me can be overwhelming.
The Atlas 0-8-0 was absolutely my favorite locomotive, steam or otherwise.
Among the Postage Stamp products that grabbed me, oddly, wasn't even railroad-related, and it was European to boot: this silly little mill captured my attention like no other.
Pola kits in general really caught my eye principally due to their artwork, but this kit in particular quickly became my favorite.
Another favorite kit was the Atlas L-shaped enginehouse, which fed a great deal of kitbashing projects throughout my entire modeling career.
The appeal of this Arnold Rapido water tower was, curiously, the little brick pumphouse, which I used later on as a relay shed.
Although Preiser figures were superior, Merten figures were the first to populate my first "real" layout, admittedly because their packaging was more appealing (at this writing, I was unable to find any images of these sets as they originally appeared). The draw of the first set remains a mystery, although there's something about the man chopping the tree branch that pushed some obscure button. The set of passengers was also a favorite, and I used them on many layouts. Ultimately, N Scale figures became an obsession.