Grew up with trains. Not the real kind, though. Not at first.

There’s a photo of me at age one, playing with a push train on the floor. Brio-style. Plastic wheels and tracks. Pure joy.

But the obsession kicked in at three, when my dad brought home his first model trains. Märklin. German engineering. Flawless operation. Our apartment floor became the proving ground. A single loop of track and a BR 01 Pacific in full motion. Steam power! Side rods dancing like clockwork on display. It was mesmerizing.

That locomotive changed everything for me. It’s how I developed a passion for steam locomotives.

As his collection grew, so did his ambition. We moved to a house. The basement turned into a temple of trains. Every new layout, bigger than the last. My dad was building worlds down there. By the time I hit my teens, I was itching to start my own.

Strange thing? I’d barely been on a real train. A few streetcars in San Francisco. A couple kiddie trains at the Zoo and Tilden Park. That was it. No cross-country trips. No sleeping cars. No clickety-clack of rails underfoot.

We did stand at the 16th Street Yards, now Mission Bay, watching the yard crews wrap up for the day. That was the extent of our railfanning. A glimpse of the real thing, sure. But the fire was already lit.

My love of trains? It was really built on miniature plastic, brass, and imagination.

Years later, I’ve had a few layouts of my own. The current one, the Redwoods and Pacific, is about 75% done. Still pulls me in. Still feels like magic.

Some people find joy in the open road. Me? I find it in a stretch of track and a steamer pulling boxcars through a dense miniature forest.