It was winter of 1994 when I recieved my first Lionel train engine. I believe it was in November, before thanksgiving. Me and my dad went to a local hobby shop, called Iron Horse Hobby Shop. Owner at the time was Frank Hare. Me and my dad spent about an hour looking at all the postwar lionel steam engines. We narrowed it down to just 3 possible engines that I liked. The 726, 736 and 2046. Frank pointed out that the 2046 was my best choice for a beginner. So, I took his advice and purchased the 2046. Frank even said it was a better buy, because both the engine and tender had original boxes. And that the engine was a better smoker and much faster engine. i will never forgot the day my father took me to the hobby shop to buy my first Lionel Postwar engine. Frank was the greatest hobby shop man I have ever met. He had such great information, great love for the hobby and just a great person. I still have my 2046 to this day and is in the same condition as the day me and my dad bought it. No repairs have been done on it, because it was my first, so i treat it like it means something to me. So tell me about your story about buying your first train engine. Thanks.
What a neat story. I never had Lionel as a lad. My dad did - but his trains would rarely come out even at Christmas. I discovered MR mag as a grown-up. Got into a smaller scale. Then made a conscious decision to sell everything and move into O - just loved the heft, sound, lights and … history of Lionel. Got myself a Ballyhoo circus train set and I’ve been off and running 027 ever since. Then I discovered trolleys - and Thomas… but that’s another story. 
I think I told this before but my first train was bought in 1957 … I worked on farms for $1.00 a day and my dad went to auctions . I had saved up about $35.00 and there it was … an American Flyer small set with a couple cars ! He let me bid on it and I won . From then on I added every car and accessory I could find at auctions . I ended up with about every addon they made and around 20 cars … and a huge oval . She was beautiful … and a smoker ! It had what dad called white walls … LOL . It took years to build … I spent 1,000 's of hours just watching her roll . Then one day I went to get it out and found out my father had sold it !!! Broke my heart . There were alot of trains at auctions back then … at prices even a kid with little money could afford .
Santa brought mine Christmas of 1949 or 50. It’s a Lionel Scout and I still have the set. It seems like it took Dad and my Granddad TWO HOURS to show me how to run it[swg] The next few Christmases I got a 2035 train and a 601 diesel set. Dad mounted the layout on a 4x8 plywood and I ran those trains in my bedroom for years.
They were neatly packed away when I got into my teens. Just lately I got them out for my grandson to see and we are having a ball with them.
Hopefully, he will have fond memories of them and me as I do of my recently departed dad and me playing with them.
My first, and most treasured train engine - purchased by my Dad a few years before I was born - a Lionel 726.
Sixty-one years old (the engine, not me) and by far the smoothest most reliable engine I have ever had.
1970 Sears set was first purchased for me. My first train was my Dad’s from 1949 headed up by a 2020. Still have them all. My Sears set needs some tlc, but that 2020 works like a sewing machine…smoothe and consistant…the plunger for the smoke does make the usual noise, but she’s supposed to do that.
Dennis
Very nice 726!
My Dad and I used to visit my Grandmother in Avon Pittsburgh PA. twice before the holidays, going to Pittsburgh and not seeing a train was like going to Detroit and not seeing a car…it was a very exciting time for me.
I was 6 at the time and my Uncle drove from Mceesport across the river to visit every day while we stayed with Grandmom. One night a week before Christmas my Uncle, my Dad and I drove to a friend of my Uncles house. I walked in and in the main living room was lionel and american flyer trains set up, complete with a spiral mountain with a train that went almost to the ceiling ( I was short then). Just like the Polar express movie… I could not believe the layout, the TRAINS! Irvington cars pulled by a 733, a black GG-1 with all sorts of operating cars, a girls train set, and an American flyer war bonnet with chrome colored cars, all the operating equipment, and scenery to boot. This was a Christmas layout too…so it was temporary! Well I could have stayed all night but we had to leave after an hour of being in heaven.
The next day we were returning to Michigan, when my Dad said we had to make a stop before we left, We stopped at a small warehouse, walked in through the shipping door, and it was a flurry of activity. We met the same man that set this magnificent train layout up and he handed my Dad a few boxes and we left. When I got home, my dad gave me the boxes to open and I found a two prewar american flyer sets. one passenger the other freight, with big steamers pulling the pack. The other two sets were a TCA Coke set, and a TCA BiCentenial passenger set from Lionel… just beautiful, the TCA sets I played with constantly, the Pre War sets my Dad displayed and only under careful eye could I run. I still have the sets today minus the Pre War pass set ( I think my Dad traded up
I played with my older brothers pre war Lionel [baby Blue Comet etc.] until 1954 when my parents and brother let me trade them in for new post war Lionel at Frenchs Lionel Train House in Midway, Washington. In later years when HO was hot [around 1960] I traded my Lionel in for HO. Jack French tried to talk me out of it and said I would be sorry. My mom said “Russ are you sure this is what you want to do?” I said yes I’m sure. Two weeks later I tried to kill myself for making the mistake of my life. [just kidding but I was upset]
Just a follow-up; I was thinking about this while horseback today. I have three Lionel sets and a 20 gauge shotgun from Christmases as a kid. The only old Christmas/birthday gifts I still have.
I bet most 40+ year old gifts fall into these two categories: fine firearms and ELECTRIC TRAINS!
Still love and use them all.
Christmas of 1954 when I was nearly 4, I awoke to discover Santa had left my first electric train…he even took the time to set it up under the tree. Lionel 2031 Rock Island FA1 AA deisels with three 242X silver passenger cars. A basement permanent 2 loop layout construction project was soon to follow. And more Lionel each Christmas thereafter. These ran about 20 years before the layout was dismantled and the trains stored away.
It wasn’t until I was pushing 40 that I pulled the trains out of nearly 2 decades of storage to resurrect the Christmas layout tradition, and another 10 years before I started to read up on what I had.
Much to my surprise, I discovered that the 2031s were manufactured in 1952, the 3 window 2046 Hudson in 1950, and the UP 2023 Anniversry Alcos in 1950 as well. Apparently my father Santa literally counted his chickens before they were hatched and started setting aside trains for me before I was even born. My father worked 7 days a week, but he always found the time to spend with me playing with the trains in the basement. The memories are still with me though my parents are not.
So are the trains. As RT so aptly said, countless Christmas and birthday presents have come and gone, but these trains are all still soldiering on…except for a 1615 switcher that needs some right side drive rods.
Toy trains may be a hobby for some, but to others they are far more than that. For me, memories and tradition ride the rails along with the fun. Maybe that’s why some like me have such a strong preference for a specific train period, like Postwar.
Jack
Well, really my 1st toy train engine was a lionel 2026 my grandpa showed my. he said he found it in his absement and he knew I liked trains so he let my play with it whenever I came there. that was 1997 and I was 3. fastworward to christmas of 2002. I was 7 and fo the past 4 years i’d ask everybirthday and christmas for a lionel train set but my parents didnt think I would be ready till I was 7. I was so happy that morning. took the instructions out of the box and started reading, by the time he finished I already had the trains up and running. of course my grandpa taught me how to wire everything when I was 5 [:D]. THe set was an NYC flyer with railsounds. I was amazed with the railsounds, I was used to postwar locomotives. it was amazing. the engine isnt old at all so of course it runs great still.
My JC Higgins 20 gauge single shot I got for Christmas is long gone but I still have my JC Higgins .22 single shot. I also have my dad’s Savage Model 29a .22 pump and it still works like a charm. My brother has his old Winchester Model 94 25.35 with an octagon barrel. The original Lionel 2046 I got for Christmas in 1950 is still running like a top after all these years along with all the cars and accessories that came with the set.
Mike
Christmas 54 Santa left me a Lionel 2055 freight set. Is till have it all including track, transformer and owners manual. Had boxes but ex-wife destroyed them [one reason she is ex, she didn’t like trains or layout]. As far as guns and fishing gear, my Dad did not hunt or fish. I worked in tobacco for Dad and tenant farmer on our farm all one summer when I was 12 to buy Remington 870 12 gauge shotgun. Still have it and use it. Been reblued twice [wore bluing off], refinished stock 5 times [myself] and have added two barrels [last has changable chokes]. Fired thousands of shells through it. At 8, my Aunt and Uncle [who fished] gave me a kid’s fishing rod and reel. Think my Mom gave it to a younger male cousin since I had upgraded a lot on my own.
XMAS 63 I recieved a 628 NP 44 tonner set, my brother a no 44 US army set, and a 4x8 platform with track screwed down. Dad bought it all from a collector/dealer who dealt out of his basement. It all got pretty trashed over the years. We got HO in XMAS 67. I remember rattle canning My 44 tonner green after the BN merger.
My father bought my first toy train set for me shortly after I turned 9. It was in 1973 and the set was Lionel’s Southern Express purchased from Two Guys department store (Totowa, NJ location). This was as a result of nearly destroying an N-Scale collection (never mix small trains with clumsy little hands) and my father in between various colorful expletives telling me to never touch them again. Some of first lessons I learned was never mix an AC transformer with a DC motor ( from an Erector set ) and keep smaller and lighter O-27 cars behind the larger standard O counterparts.
A few years later, the Lionel and the N-Scale were used as trade in material for a growing HO scale empire. Today, I am trying to track down that MPC era set. That is my first toy train story and I am stuck with it.[:)]
lionel2,
My love for trains started when I was young and able to realize about real trains, my father’s trains and an uncle, who gave my father the set, who used to scratch build all sorts of models and made them realistic.
My uncle once sold a scratch built set to a movie co. in the late '40’s, or '51, or '52, he asked what was to become of them, the reply was; “A scene with an explosion of a bridge, with the set going over at the moment of detonation.”
One Sat. morning, since my brother was five and I was six and we behaved, our father took us to where he worked in Brooklyn, N.Y. to get some business papers, see a storefront train display and the B.E.D.T. waterfront railway, it’s gone by now, then when we got home our father set-up his Lionel '027" gauge pre-war tin plate set for all of us to enjoy.
My father’s set consist of a #1664E 2-4-2 Columbia Scout locomotive, (not the shrouded streamlined one), a box type tender and both motive units are of a beautiful gun metal grey with ‘New York Central’ on the tender’s sides and the locomotive, though a ‘027’, puts some postwar ‘O’ guage engines to shame. This 1664E from a slow start moves effortlessly smooth in forward and reverse. Even after time has past and without an overhaul this engine performs as described above. The loco. has a headlight, forward, neutral and reverse, no smoke, green forward marker jewels and ornamental bell and whistle, this is when Lionel put craftmanship, as well, as workmanship into their products, no matter how inexpensive. A ‘Baby Ruth’ box, a ‘Sunoco’ tank and a red,(Western railway- off center cupola type), cab. finish this set.
Then, for Christmas of 1950 my brother and I, he age six and I age seven, both received from Santa, ordered by two of our mother’s sisters, a Lionel ‘Electric’ Scout s
Great story, Ralph. How many guys swapping stories of their first trains still have them? Suspect most do, as some have noted. I wonder if Chief got a prenup with a train clause this time around. [:D]
Jack
I still have my first Lionel Engine, #2046, as well as my first KW transformer and track, even my first lockon. Still have all the cars that I bought with that engine. Thanks.
Well my first set was an HO scale Tyco Alco Action Freight from 1969-1970. And over the years I’ve collected other HO sets as well as a few N scale ones. I usually set them up on the dining room table or on the floor and run them.
However, I never had a Lionel set and I’ve always wanted one. Once I left home and got on my own the train phase kinda left me and I didn’t run my trains as much as I used to. But 7 years ago I found out we had a train show that came to our city once a year and I got hooked back on trains and would bring out my N scale sets to run around the Christmas trees during the holiday season.
This Christmas my wife suprised me with the Lionel Polar Express, we happened to be out shopping and saw one on display and I commented on how that would be neat to have. So she purchased it for me. I’ve been having a blast with it and added the other 5 cars to set over the past few months.
**Ollie…**I think it’s only proper that you return the exceptional thoughtfulness your wife expressed toward you this past Christmas and return the favor. What train stuff do you think you she would like? [:D] On a more serious note, I’d look for some lighted ceramic Christmas village pieces for under the tree. My wife likes how they ratchet up the fun decorations in the house and look good with the trains. While the scales don’t necessarily match, the concept makes up for it: the winter scene in 1940s small town America… Guests go gaga over this combo too. And the youngsters especially. Give all credit to the wife when the compliments flow. This thing has to be strategically nurtured!
Jack