What started your interest in electric trains? I think I was born with it. I always loved trains in any scale. I guess I started out watching Thomas the Tank engine, and it went on from there. My Mom told me that, my half-brother was briefly into trains when he was younger, and he had an old HO scale TYCO Chattanooga Choo Choo steam engine and when I was a baby, I would point up at it like I was saying I want it, but everytime he said no, I would cry. One day, he finally gave in and let me play with it on the floor, and left the room. When he came back, he found the train lying on the floor in pieces. When he saw that, he just laughed. As I got older, I would play with those big New Bright battery powered trains on the floor, and eventually, my mom bought me a Bachmann HO scale trainset one Christmas that had a Santa Fe diesel engine and I played with it on a 4ft by 8ft sheet of plywood board. I played with HO scale trains by that time and had a small layout built with two tracks on two levels. The HO trains got too frustrating for me to run, so I eventually abandened them. One day, my dad took me to a furniture store that also sold Lionel trains. He had a steam locomotive running on the outside track on a display layout at that time and I saw the big puffs of smoke, and thats when I fell in love with Lionel trains, particularly steam engines. One Christmas when me and Dad were living in the attic of Grandma’s house, my Dad said something like come upstairs. And my first Lionel train was setup there on the attic floor. It was a scout train set with a 4-4-2 steam engine with a boxcar and flatbed car and lighted cabbose. It ran on a small loop of 0-27 track, and I was hooked from there.
I remember getting my first Lionel train set from a yard sale in the 70’s. It was my best friend who lived behind me and i still have it box and all (if only the power pack worked). It generated smoke as well. I later bought a boxcar to go with it from a public television fundraiser auction. Its amazing how a simple figure eight and a few cars can keep a kid occupied for hours.
Cheers to Lionel for giving many a parent a few fleeting moments of peace!
NC
If anything, it goes back to my early childhood.
I live in a town just south of Savannah, GA, and CSX’s Nahunta subdivision goes through there. (The Nahunta Sub also goes through Folkston, GA, the famous raifan spot) My town can see up to 40 trains a day, and back when I was 4 or 5, I can remember going over the tracks and always “seeing a light”. And, if it was close, we would turn around and go see it.
Probably what got me started in toy trains was Thomas the Tank. I had a vast collection and still do. I played with them up to about 7 or 8 years old.
Then, about that same age, my father started taking me to the model train show in Savannah. It is a big show, and has mainly HO products, and layouts, but they have a lot of Postwar trains there. (But not operating) When we first started going, ever year I would buy HO trains. (I have tons of HO trains right now) But, (I’m not sure of the year), one year I got a K-Line set with a switcher and a couple of cars. I dont remember playing with it but I know I had to at least play with it a couple of times. After I quit playing with it, I got back to playing with HO.
Then, when I was about 11 years old, I got a Lionel Pennsy Starter set with a 4-4-2 and a few freight cars. After I played with it a bit, I put it away. (One thing to note here; I had a video called “A Lionel Christmas” that my aunt gave me when I was about 7 years old, so I knew what Lionel trains were)
Then, when I was 12, I began looking at Lionels website and looking at trains. I started becoming interested once again. Then, I bought my fist accessory. The #397 coal loader. Next,
Growing up I had HO Tyco Crap. Was very jealous of a Freind who had a large at least 16 x 16 layout with Lionel, all New MPC ERA circa early 70’s. His stayed on the track and ran great. Tyco was very intermittant and jumped the track often. Parents said Lionel was too expensive, even the then cheap DTI yard boss set. Fast forward to approximately 2002, my very cool mother-in-law bought me a Lionel PA Flyer at the JC Penny Closeout Store for $48 day after Christmas.
Next year we were first in line at same store and bought 10 sets, all they had, I broke them up and sold them on E-bay for a nice profit. Paid $48 each got about $180 total for selling the CW-80’s, The Engines, and the Fastrack seperate. Then at age 45 hooked up with an old high school friend who had been collecting Lionel for 10 years. We got a chance to take over a display layout in a mall. Switched it from 2 rail 0 to 3 rail 0, put countless hours into it. layout is 24x55 multi-level conventional, TMCC, and now DCS. I still have “N” at home because I have no room there for 0. Other thing that got me into 0 was a neat hobby shop called Cool Trains in Salunga, PA opened across the street from the Photo Studio my Wife and I owned. He had and Has everything, great store for all scales, especially “0”. Dave
OK, it’s time to blame the parents!!![:-^] My Dad has some stuff, so when we moved form my Grandmom’s house (1959), we had a basement. A BIG basement. Dad had 6 4X8 sheets of plywood, put them together in 2 rows of 3. Covered it with LifeLike green paper. Had a big oval with a bascule bridge, a turn out with switches and an EL. The diesel was always on the EL, the oval was property of the steamers!! When we moved, Dad put them away (1969). Hadn’t seen them until January this year. Was in and out of HO for a while, never got the same thrill as with the Lionels. 4 years ago, had enough cash from Christmas to buy a NYC with trainsounds from Charles RO. Now have an inside L shaped layout. Modest by anyone’s standards, but I have a collection as big, if not bigger than my Dad’s. I just got Dad’s 1666 running after a least 40 years. Mom was down from Jersey to see it. Showed Dad the video. He’s impressed and happy, and so am I.
It’s a Legacy thing, ya know!
Got started with a push train at the age of about 3 in 1961. Got a Lionel NP 44 tonner set in 1963. Switched to HO around 1967 and stayed with HO until about 1974. Got back into the hobby with MPC Lionel followed by postwar 1981.
Grampa was the collector. Collected mostly Prewar O and Std ga., maybe 15% postwar. Grandpa lived just a few blocks away and I was over to his house on average once week to play with his trains. Grandpa gave all three boy grandchildren (3 boys one girl) O ga sets when we got about 5 yrs old each. Neither my Dad or Uncle had any interest in trains, so it skipped a generation. Out of the three grandsons, I kept interest, and dabbled in HO. But when Grandpa passed in 2001, I got the majority of his collection, and went back to Std and O. I’ve since added to his former (now mine) collection, and am on a slow process in building a combined Std and O ga layout.
CJ Meyers
South Jersey
My dad got me into toy trains. Since then, it’s been a family thing. My 16-month-old son LOVES them!! When I ask him if he wants to see the trains he makes choo-choo noises and everything.
Received a Lionel starter set in about 1974 ( I was 4 yrs. old at the time.), for Christmas. Later the same day, we went to my Grandparents house, and my Dad gave me his old scout set. Two train sets on the same day! A couple months later our neighbor gave me a bunch of track and cars! Fast forward about 10 years, Dad had built a layout in the basement, the neighbor came and saw it, and asked for his stuff back!! TORE ME UP!! With over half the layout gone, my Dad and I were determined to build another. A few weeks later, coming home from a lawn mowing job on my bike, a car backed out and hit me. Broke my arm. Insurance gave me a wopping $150.00 for money lost, because I couldn’t mow for 6 weeks. Dad took me to Taylor’s Toy’s in Great Bend, Kansas, and I purchased my 1st. diesel engine ever. 3 or 4 years later my Dad gave me a postwar 2343 AA set, and here I am.
The avatar photo was taken in 1955. Now you know when I started with a train set. My first actual Lionel Train was given to me for Christmas in 1962. It still runs perfectly.
My story has overtones of epic tragedy ;). My family wasn’t very well off in the 1950s and despite my pleas, my parents felt trains were beyond our means. My father was rather condescending about my continued interest in model trains during my early teens. By the time I was 15 I had saved up enough for an HO Tyco set which I rapidly lost interest in as my interest in other activities, such as girls, increased. Flash forward many years of off and on interest in HO, and a little LGB in my late thirties, to age 40 and my wife buys me some Lionel from Charles Ro and we operate it around the Christmas tree. The quality is rather indifferent compared with LGB, so I don’t do much with it until TMCC is introduced in 1995-96. Since then I’ve more than made up for lost time in terms of toy train acquisition, mostly selling what HO I had, and becoming a three rail accumulator. Maybe someday I’ll have more than an 11 x 14 floor layout and displays, but who knows. I’m clearly a toy train guy not a model railroader or rail fan.
I got started with HO at about the age of 5 (My father sold the American Flyers and bought a Lionel HO train set[:(]) Well I liked them but they just weren’t for me and at agee 9 for xmas my father got me (from his family lawyer) a 2359 B&M GP-7/9 set with super O track[:D]. I was hooked he couldn’t get me back into HO no matter how hard he tried.
A Lionel Christmas present in the late 40’s started trains for me. Changed to HO in early (?) 50’s. Gave my Lionel set to my nephews in late 50’s, girls,cars, Navy kept me away from trains til mid 60’s, then HO & then N for a while. Bought a Lionel 2020 turbine early 90’s, been 3-rail since then.
My early childhood had my oldest brother’s Missouri Pacific AA on Super O in the basement. He joined the Navy. It was packed away and the trend was slot cars. During the late seventies My brother got me interested and at the same time my future wife and I went on the antique trail. I bought a 41 Army switcher from a TCA member who sold trains around Xmas.At a antique shop, I found a well used Marine Corp Diesel with other cars in box . A collector was born.
My Grandpa always had a love for trains. when I was 3 or 4 he used to tell me about how in the army he used to have to put blocks of ice under the pennsylvania passenger trains to keep them cool and other train related stories. Even though he didnt have a lionel layout he used to talk about as a kid playing with American flyers and lionels. before I was a year old I started watching Thomas the Tank Engine. By the age of 4 I loved any kind of train Thomas or not. My Grandpa knew this and one day when I was over his house he said he wanted to show me something. He took me down into the basement. There was a huge double loop layout running on top of 3 or 4 old tables put togather! I remember seeing his 2026 on the outside loop ( The only reason I do is becasue I still have and run the engine :P) and the 681 on the outside.( I also have and run this one too.) He also had a good ammount of rolling stock too and some prewar American Flyers which I wasnt aloud to use yet :P. Ater that I begged for a lionel set of my own from my parents at Chistmas ever year until I was 6. Thats when I got my 1st lionel set. A New york central flyer set that came with a 4-4-2 engine with railsounds, and 3 freight cars. This was my 1st look at modern lionel. I played with that set for hours. every now and then I’d go to the hobbie shop and sit and look at some of the newer lionels and leave with some new streights to make the loop bigger. On the christmas of 2005 I recieved my 1st standard O engine. The new Santa Fe F3. I was expecting something like the old postwar locos but when That thing started up and smoke started comming and I heard that diesel roar I was hooked for life. [:)] Even though im more of steam fan [;)]
I “officially” got into the electric train hobby Christmas 1955. I was 4 and I say “officially” because my father actually started buying Lionel trains before I was born, hence two engines I have that predate my birth: a 2046 Hudson and the 2023 Union Pacific anniversary Alco FA1s. Unless, of course, it was my mother who started buying them as a closet train fanatic.
My folks started giving them to me when Dad’s thumb and forefinger wore out winding up the engine on some wind up train he had previously given to me…he told me that later in life.
Jack
My father was a life long train collector. He and his twin brother were given a Lionel train when they were kids, and they both had “the bug” for the rest of their lives. I lost interest in trains by the time I was 14. My father, however, expanded his collection and layout which eventually filled a 1400 square foot attic.
Fast forward to 2006 when my father died, and I had the job of selling his collection for my mother (she wanted to move into a smaller house). I worked on moving and selling the collection in my spare time and one full day a week, and it took from May until December to finally get everything packed, catalogued, and sold. Over the years he had squirreled away dozens of boxes of track (now rusty) and parts and accessories. I guess spending so much time dealing with his collection caused a relapse of “the bug” which I thought I had outgrown at age 14, but at age 47 I was again smitten with train lust.
At the time of his death (at age 89) Dad’s collection was mostly Lionel O gauge and a pretty large LGB set up. Now, my interest is mostly pre war O gauge Lionel, Ives, and American Flyer, and lately, some Post war Lionel and new Lionel, Williams, and MTH. In my case train collecting was definitely bred in the bone.
Hi!
I was a kid in Chicago in the '50s, and got the mandatory Christmas gift trainset when I was 10 in 1954. Unfortunately (to me at that time) it was a Marx, and all my friends had Lionel. Of course Lionel was significantly more expensive, and that was the way it was.
When I was 12, I got a Chicago Herald American 7 day a week paper route, and with my Christmas gift money bought my first Lionel. It was the work train set with the 0-4-0 loco, 12 wheel crane and tender, box and hopper car. I got it at Western Auto, and the guy threw in the 6xxx gondola with the set. Well, from then on all the Christmas and birthday gifts were train related, and in 1958 I had a large layout in the basement of our store.
With the onset of motorcycles, girls, and cars, I traded in the Lionel for HO (Athearn), but it was never the same after that. Ha, years later, with a marriage and 4 kids (now in their 40s), I have a pretty nice postwar collection and a terrific collection of Ho stuff and large layout.
What a lifelong hobby this has been, and while my interest goes up and down some, it is always there as my favorite pastime.
ENJOY,
Mobilman44
In the traditional way - train set for Christmas. I think my father really bought into the Lionel advertsing - he got me the trains when I was 2 1/2 and too young to really appreciate/operate. Additions came every Christmas & occasionaly for birthdays. Like many I moved to HO slot cars in the 1960s and packed everything away until 1981 when my boss’s boss casually asked if I had Lionel trains as a kid. We started comparing notes & he showed me the McComas books about the history of Lionel. Those conversations hooked me again - got the trains from my mother and immediately set them up on the living room floor (I have some great pics of my pregnant wife sitting on floor runnning the trains). I have been collecting & operating ever since - now I get trains for Christmas & birthdays again!
1972 christmas - got an 8040 kids starter set. Me and bro played with it and abused it to death. It still runs good to this day and has a book value of 25 bucks but a sentimental value worth alot more.
Now I have way too many f-3’s that cost way too much but whatever i still go to ebay everyother day looking for “just one more cool f-3”
Recently found a 8040 on ebay that i bought for cheap to give to my bro - who was tickled silly to get it.