Dad.....
I can remember growing up, Dad would set up a Lionel train set every once in awhile. Not only that, the whole family would take trips around Connecticut to watch trains, mostly the New Haven. I still remember walking through a field, with my dad and grandfather, trackside, just to watch a frieght go by. Many a time getting a hair cut at Marios in Cannan, Conn. Mario would have to stop cutting my hair, just so I could watch the train run through town.(Marios was pretty close to the tracks)
Later on in life, I started too build a small HO scale layout in the basemant. i would save my lawn mowing money, just to buy rolling stock, locos and track.Many a time, I would catch dad down in the basement, running the trains. I had this layout right through high school(girls were still a major interest then). But had to give it up for college, and eventually the army.
When I ETSed out and came home I found my father had started a small N scale layout. So I hepled him with scenery and such.Back then, N scale stuff was mostly Bachmann, and there wasn't hardly anything available like there is today. Mom and Dad retired to Arizona, the layout went to the kid next store, and I got some of the equipment, but the girlfriend that I was living with, didn't like trains, so they ended up in a box in the closet of my apartment.
After a couple of years, I finally gave her the size 14 out the door, when the new girl that moved in with me(wife...ex wife) was cleaning out the closet, she found the box and wondered why I didn't have a layout. So I started a layou in the apartment, which grew to one corner, that is the same time I started to kitbash, scratchbuild and custom paint,this eventually grew into a basement layout in the home we bought. It was this time, that I also started an HO scale layout. The N scale(sorry Tyson) eventually lost out to the HO scale and divorce.
Sooooo...Thats where I am today.
Did I bore you yet?