My Mother and Father just got back from snowbirding in Arizona for the winter. They stopped by my house for a visit and I had not told them about the train set I had bought for my son. When they came down to the rec room and saw our train set they were surprised. They both really liked it and my Mother told me some info which I had not heard before.
My Mothers Father had a huge layout in their basement in the 1950’s involving at least 4 trains running at once and tracks that went from one end of the basement to the other. She said he had alot of Lionel buildings, trees and other accessories including crossing guards and other working accessories. My Father was dating my Mother then and saw it and said it was quite impressive.
In 1962 my Mothers family moved to Arizona after my Mother and Father got married. They boxed up all of the trains and everything train related and took them with them. The trains never saw the tracks again. My Grandfather died not too long after their move and when my Uncle got married he inheirited the trains. He never set them up and my Mother said his wife told him to get rid of them and he sold everything for a couple hundred bucks. It saddens me now to know my Grandfathers train are being enjoyed by someone other than me. At least now I know where I got the enjoyment of running my new trains from. I inherited it from my Grandfather which I barely knew. Another connection to my Grandfather which I will cherish.
Sorry to say but that is true about a lot of trains from back in the 50’s and 60’s and even befor then also. I have one set (or part of I should say engine , tender, and caboose) from a dear freind of the family it was her brothers before he passed awayed and now she is gone too but I still hae this set which I have added to it dates back to 1931
My mother sold my Marx trains in a yard sale years ago without my knowledge. She just assumed that I didn’t want it. In all honesty, at the time (I was in college) I would have probably agreed with her. I think she got $10 for the lot. Not that it would have been worth much in dollars, but today I sure wish I had it.
There were also trains in my family in the past that are now gone. My uncle on my mom’s side had a Lionel Scout set with a 156 station platform added to it that was sold long before I was ever born.
My grandfather (also on my mom’s side) had a clockwork train set back in the 20’s with a cast iron steam engine. It was a passenger set with an oval of track. Could have been Hafner, American Flyer or Bing. Nobody has any idea what ever happened to it.
My dad and his brother had some kind of a little tinplate clockwork set. The only details that my dad can recall of it are that it had British-style brown and cream passenger cars. I’m guessing that this was a Mettoy or Brimtoy set. It probably survived the years in a shed which contained all sorts of old possessions from my dad’s family. However, when I was less than a year old, the shed burnt to the ground. How I would have loved to have gone through the contents of that shed-who knows what vintage treasures were contained within!
Try to remember that up into the 1980’s, the community of “O” gauge train operators and collectors was very small. While the prices mentioned in these posts seem to be a pittance from today’s point of view, there is a good chance that whoever purchased them paid a fair and reasonable price.
In my opinion, it was the excellent books put out by TM that kindled the explosive growth in Lionel train collecting. These books put information about Lionel trains at peoples fingertips.
I wish I had held on to all sorts of trains that I owned at one time or another.
Cwburfle is correct - it wasn’t until the 80’s that things really started to change as far as train prices were concerned. For example, in the late 1970’s a local hobby shop had displayed on a top shelf in the store 10 of the Lionel Air and Space cars. All were brand new and every time I walked into the store their they sat. I walked in one Saturday and the store owner had marked all of them down to $3.00 each. I ignored the offer as aparently did everyone else. A month or two later and he had them down to $2.00 each and again there were no takers. About 6 months later I went into the store to purchase some painting supplies and I noticed he had the cars priced at $1.00 each. I thought about it for awhile and, since I actually had a spare $10 bill in my wallet, I decided to buy them. The owner brought out the boxes, we packaged everything up, and I handed over the ten dollars. Even at $1.00 each I didn’t think I had much of a bargain but I had decided it would be worth getting them for the novelty factor - the idea that a few decades later people would be paying hundreds of dollars each for cars in this condition was a thought that never crossed my mind.
1666 set from my childhood survived with my brother that lives close to me. He runs the train now with his grand kids. It’s great it survived! The other set that graced the tree was an American Flyer and it seemed like it was a Silver Bullet if that’s even a model that was made. It when to Texas with my brother who is now dead and it was hocked in a pawn shop for next to nothing I think. Dad never intended for that train to end up that way. Jake
Heres another example. I remember visiting Trainland on Long Island in th 1970’s. They had 3470 target ballon cars and 6801 jet boat cars, brand spanking new in boxes, in big stacks right up to the ceiling.
There were still lots of new trains sitting in hobby shops, tire stores, department stores (large and small), 5 and 10’s etc.
I almost lost mine about 25 years ago. My dads sister put my trains out in the garuge with the garbage, she was cleaning house for my grandmother. They were boxed up from when I took them down when I went to the Navy. I lived at my grandmothers at the time. I came home from work and grandma told me that my aunt had cleaned the house and put my trains in the garage with the garbage. I carried them back into the house past her and put them back where I had them stored. End of stroy she never went near the boxes of trians after that.
Not al trains were dispossed of. My parents sold a lot of my stuff, but never did sell my cheap Lionel train from 1964. It is not worth much money but I do love it and run it once in a while.
Well here is a true story about trains. “lesson learned” Years ago my brother in law wanted to set up some old model motoring track he had for my nephew i told him i had a train set that i would bring over to his house for his son and him to injoy playing with i told him when he was done with it to let me know and i would get it. well time went by and then years went buy. Then when they where moving to a new house they had built and when we where helping them move i asked my sister if she still had my train set and was told the only set she had was one my brother in law was given as a kid. I saw the set in the move it was mine they said they did not remember me ever bringing one over Not wanting to start a argument. I let it go. To this day im still “$%#&@# about it”
This last Christmas I watched for the first time “The Polar Express” and loved it. Watching the movie got me to thinking about my “Tyco” trains I had growing up. I called my Dad and he had kept them for me all these 40 years. He mailed them to me, I cleaned them up and all the locomotives run still. This rekindled my interest in trains, so now I have my own “0” gauge set, a combination of Lionel and MTH, which I love to run.
Thanks to my mom who believed in handing everything down in the family, my 1939 Christmas gift of a little tinplate NYC Marx became a “ground runnner” and was destroyed in my ten years younger brother’s sand pile in 1950 while I was off in Korea helping lose the War.
p.s:
Mom was from Ohizio! [they did have and eat Grits at Grandma’s in Dennison during the 1930s-40s.
My father gave me his Marx Santa Fe freight set when I was 13… we couldn’t get the engine to run and took it to a LHS and were told there was nothing that could be done with it, so I sold everything back in 1999 for Lionel stuff… found out 3 months later from a repair guy that he had repaired this very engine type at least 100 times! [:(] Where I most likely would have never purchased additional Marx stuff to go with it (didn’t know about train shows back then), I would really LOVE to have that set today… If only I knew what items were in it I would be looking for them at trainshows… I know it had a powered A Unit, non powered B Unit, gondola, boxcar and caboose… not sure if it had a hopper car or flat car…
Still beat myself up everytime I think about it… really mad at myself…
But that still doesn’t compare to what happened to his baseball card collection… my Grandmother gave them to my cousin and my aunt used them to start a fire in her fireplace… he had 3 Mickey Mantle Triple Crown cards… last time he checked they were worth over $3,000 a piece… [:(]