A recent note from Jack B. asked about how it felt to look back on 40 years in American OO. 40 YEARS!!! Checking in my files he was absolutely right, I purchased my first Eastern OO kit in August of 1977, and began corresponding with Temple Nieter, who encouraged me greatly, starting in November of 1977. I was only 15 (!!) at the time, having built a small layout in HO and also having dabbled in TT. Oh my, time flies. I had discovered OO originally in an old model railroading book that belonged to my older brother. This forgotten gauge intrigued me.

Temple Nieter referred to himself and others like him who got going in American OO when it was still commercially available as “OOdtimers.” Basically, they had got going in OO then, why switch? In the context of 2017 I am now an OOldtimer for kind of the same reason, I developed a level of expertise and like the size, feel, and history of the scale. And also, there’s that part of me that does not want to do what everyone else is doing I guess.

I was not working on models actively when I was in grad school and in the early years of marriage and kids. But I did keep everything and picked back up where I left off. The models seen in the photo here are among my very earliest, the freelanced Fall River boxcab being my first OO locomotive, built up mostly from HO parts (the body started life as a Athearn F7B, the drive and other parts are from an AHM RS2), and that Eastern boxcar is my very first car, built from a fresh kit purchased directly from Eastern (which was still in business then). My main freelanced line has always been the Orient, I started building HO models for it before I got into OO, but the original models were for a different freelanced venture (which I still may make a few more models for).

I have enough projects to keep me busy for the next 20 years for sure, and part of what keeps me going is puzzling over projects and history. Like the truck project that became a summer goal for example, I had a lot of S-C truck parts that could not be used really for lack of bolsters, then the 3D ones come out and boom. At one point about ten years ago I was down to just a few usable pair of trucks! Now I have put most of the usable parts to good use and have enough to last me that 20 years I bet.

Of course, the argument could be made that I could puzzle over projects in any scale, but OO does suit me. I’m not a fine scale modeler, I like the type of modeling I loosely call “retro modeling.” And learning new skills has been fun, such as casting in resin this past summer.

As to goals, I hope to start back up the history series again (I have notes ready to start working on the 1960s) and take it up to today, then start back in on working toward a book of some sort, on OO. The big picture goal being to write something that is accurate but not boring, looking at the people in the scale in particular, and hopefully written in such a way that people who are interested in the history of model railroading in general would find it a good read.

In any case, yes, it has been 40 years. Wow. Hopefully 40 years from now there will still be some people still interested in our mostly forgotten scale.