I am new to this forum, but I just had to share my story, and eventually some pics too.
When I was 1 year old, my Dad got me a Santa Fe train set from Marx, Diesel set with the #1095 on the (A) unit, then the dummy (B) unit, brown Erie flat car #4528, blue car hauler SOU. #51100, green NYC box car with sliding doors, yellow-gray-red A.T. & S.F. #1977 Caboose. I must have had a 1/2 mile of track, because the picture my Mom took of me & Pop, showed the track, with an outside loop, and the two switches, that ran all the way around the room on the floor, with me and my Dad in the middle of the track. Well, at some point in time, during one of our moves, not long after that photo was taken, my train set box got dropped. My Santa Fe diesel #1095 that I had loved so much, as my mom put it, was destroyed. The car hauler also destroyed, and several missing parts. Including all of that track, which the movers and my Mom said, just disappeared.
Needless to say, my heart was broken. I kept my old train in the closet now, for the past 42 years, only stoping by to look at the smashed cab, the missing parts and thinking back in time, to remember seeing it run, and playing with my Dad when he was home from work. Then it dawned on me, just recently, as I was building an O-gauge set for my two nephews, that I still had my old train in the top of that closet. I ran, not walked to that closet and jerked open that door one last time to take a good long look at my old friend. I gently took it down, removed the New Lionel Polar Express Set from the track, and very nervously placed my old friend on the track, after 42 long years. I made sure every wheel was on track, every coupler tight, then… “with the rise of that Lionel handle on that transformer” I watched my old friend stard hauling the load again. Oh yeah, “I cried for at least 30 minutes” but it was worth it for me to see it run, after all these years, just sitting there, with a piece of my broken heart, right on that top shelf