My name is Hagen Langbartels and I live in northern Germany, near Hamburg. On these pages I plan to collect information about modeling railroads and to document my forthcoming in the conversion from an armchair modeler to an active model railroad hobbyist.

I startet my career in ‘playing with trains’ when I was about seven or eight years old. One day, a few weeks before christmas, we have visited my uncle and returned with three or four packing cases full of railroad stuff. These boxes contained the railroad my dad and uncle have played with in the mid 1950’s. It was all Märklin with its M-Track. There were two locomotives (a V200 and a BR24), some cars, a lot structures and automobile models from Wiking. I had a lot of fun with this stuff. A friend and I were playing with the railroad on the carpet in a spare room of our house. On christmas I got some additional track and my dad set up a baseboard in my room. The baseboard had a size of 1.35 m by 2,7 m (about 4.5′ by 9′). I loved it. We had lots of fun with this layout.

After a move to a new house I had a full spare room to use for the railroad, so the layout grew to 1.85 m by 3.6 m (about 6′ by 12′). Even with the increased size, the track layout was very similar but we could build more scenery. My rolling stock had grown by two more locos (another V200 and a V100) and some further cars. In 1997 I tore the layout down. I had different priorities and a new use for the room.

My model railroad inventory had a very long sleep on the attic of our house. Years later my railroad boxes made another move. Into my own house. In 2012 i stumbled about an archive of many issues of the magazine MIBA. I have spent a lot of time reading through many issues and this gave my interest a new life. In October I decided to look through my railroad stuff and unpacked the boxes, together with my to my son. He was six years old at that time. At first I decided to convert my locomotives to a digital system. I bought some inexpensive decoders and got an used Intellibox on eBay. Me and my kids set up a some track on the floor in the attic. The attic is not insulated, that was a climate challenge with low temperatures during this time of the year. I bought some of the new C-Track, so we could set up a really large layout. On Christmas a new locomotive (V60) was added to my roster. My kids and I had some fun on the floor with the new tracks and locomotive (it has “Telex”-Couplers).

During the winter I made plans for gigantic layouts to fill every squar inch the attic. I did not build anything. Two years later, I think that is not a bad thing. During the warmer period of the year, I tend not to pursue this hobby, but every year during fall the interest awakes.

In 2013 I bought more track, added another locomotive (Mehano MAK G1206 Veolia, with sound!). I planed more layouts. Got some books and bought some inexpensive rolling stock and locomotives for the DC-System. I actually like industrial layouts and scenes and it is easier to integrate track into roadbed or under gravel for the DC-System as to use the Three-Rail track of Märklin’s AC-System. I liked the DC-Locomotives and how they run but I did not build any layout so far.

In 2013 I discovered Model Railroad Hobbyist, listend to all episodes of The Model Railway Show with Jim Martin and Trevor Marshal. And I stumbled upon Lance Mindheim, his philosophy and his books. All this awoke my interest in north american railways.