Some of you may have to think pretty far back but can you recall the very first time you were ready to run your first train.
This can be on your own layout or some one else’s BUT you had to be at the controls, this should be very interesting.
I’ll open with my story.
It was late in the afternoon on a hot and muggy July day, my two grandsons were over for a few days helping me set down the first tracks so our train could make a complete circle.
Because the boys enjoyed helping out so much (ages 6 & 8) I let them run the train first and after they were done , well actually after I couldn’t wait any longer I sat at the controls.
As my HO Santa Fe War Bonnet pulled away and made its way down the track I felt all the past aggravation melt away and I knew that every step was well worth it, and that I was hooked for life.
It was a moment that my Grandsons and I will never forget, and I love the fact that they will remember, that because of their hard work, they were rewarded with the very first run, and oh you should have seen their faces…I did document the moment after they were done with their first train experience with a few snap shots.
I couldn’t have planned that day together any better than how it happened, So my first drive was shared with “Bam Bam” and “Too Tall”, my Grandsons.
Happy Rails and please share your first time with us so that we may relive the joy of your first run down the tracks through your eyes.
It was probably in the late 1960s for me when I was about five years old and had gotten a three rail NYC set for Christmas made by Marx. I recall my dad (rest his soul) setting it all up for me and showing me how to turn the knob on the power pack to make it go forwards and backwards, and telling me not to run it too fast. I’ve still got the train though it no longer works. I restored it and put it on static display on a shelf in my train room.
My memory doesn’t really go back far enough. However, I had my first train set (Lionel O) for Christmas at age 6 months. Doubt I was running it then. My dad, a 50 year Santa Fe engineer and I built an O gauge empire in the attic. My guess is I got to handle the throttle about age 3 or so. I am 72 now, so I have had a lot of throttles in my hand. Our empire included the full scale Lionel Hudson, which still sits on a shelf on the fireplace in the train room. It is extremely hard to reach for obvious reasons. I have had some really wild offers to buy it. I went to HO in the late 50’s when I left home and went to college. Never been without a layout since.
The first time I ran a train was my friends Hornby 00 Intercity 125 set about 30 years ago and I remember thinking it was so cool and also feeling really jealous. As far as US models go, it was only last March and my first thought was “Wow it’s got lights” and for that price too! I haven’t looked back since. I only wish I’d started running US, HO trains years ago!
Like many of the posters so far, my first time was about 60 years ago with a Lionel around the Christmas tree - a little foggy in the memory department! What I do remember clearly was the first run for my now 12 year old grandson!! With ADD and other problems he wouldn’t even look at the TV for more than 5 minutes. I bought him the first “Kids Love Toy Trains” video and he sat and watched the whole thing - about 45 minutes!! He had several battery operated sets at home, but for Christmas when he was 4 years old, we brought him to our house the day after, and I had set up a 4x6 for my HO stuff that had been in boxes for 15 years. His eyes lit up brighter than the tree when he saw a loco, a few cars, and a few houses set up on that piece of cherry plywood (leftover from a cabinet job - a very expensive layout!) He now likes planes, construction equipment, electronics games etc, but still loves to come to Luli’s (a name he made for me when he was about 2) to go to the basement & play with the trains!![:)]
It was over 50 years ago … I was less than five years old; that much I can recall. I have an old black and white photo of me, about then, running my father’s Lionel standard gauge engine and cars around the Christmas tree. Where those things went the rest of the year, I don’t recall, but not on Dad’s standard gauge layout … I thought it was incredible, but verboten to touch. In the 1980’s, I sold all of that standard gauge equipment (plus the Lionel that he eventually bought for me) to make the downpayment on my first house (and then some).
I actually have home movies of my Lionel when I got it for Christmas 1976. There’s a couple still images of it in my Christmas video that I made (http://youtube.com/watch?v=pOuzDM6EGCw) a couple years ago. Once I get my laptop working, I’ll be able to use the DVD ripper on it to get the video.
As far as my current layout, the first train consisted of a single loco and three auto racks once I got the first of the two mainlines running. Occurred at around 2:30AM. The next day, the second main was finished, and I got two trains running. One derailed on the first trip around. Problem was an over tightened truck. It came off on a curve and stringlined several cars off the track.
These are some wonderful memories, some of you are like the original scale Train operators in the history of model rail roading and I’m humbled to be in your company.
Too chatanuga, I tried to access the link you posted and I got a notice saying that the video was no longer available…Bummer, I was looking forward to seeing the stills.
Keep up the good stories folks, I just love reading them as I’m sure others will also.
It is funny that some of you can’t recall the details but still remember what kind of train it was, now that says a lot about the attraction that people have to model trains.
If there are any pics of you as a child with your trains PLEASE feel free to post them here.
Thank you all so much for sharing your first time with us.
The very first time I saw model trains (beside the departmant store window displays at Christmas) was my late uncle’s Lionel layout in the early 60’s. I might have been 3 years old.
The layout was in the basement of my grandmother’s house, (a scary place itself) and the layout had not been run for several years. That thing scared the bejeezus out of me! Sparks everywhere, noise, smoke, etc.
I went upstairs until it quit! [:D]
I got my first trains for Christmas when I was about 4. American Flyer HO 0-6-0, Gilbert diesel switcher, Marx rolling stock, and Atlas track. I really don’t remember the first time I ran those, but I played with that layout until about 1970, when I rebuilt it to basically the same 4x8 layout I have today as part of my new layout.
I do remember the first time I fired that layout up, though. There was a real sense of pride when my trains made the first laps on the layout that I had built all by myself at 11 or 12 years old!
Christmas of 1953…American Flyer steamer,2 cars a gon and a box and a crummy…circle of track on a 4 by 4 board…never did get any straight track!!..Cox 47
Mine was almost 44 years ago. Christmas Day of 1964 in Williamsburg, Virginia. The train was an 027 general freight led by a Marklin Santa Fe E6 A-B set on three rail track.
Geez, I wish all my kids had that “problem”! [(-D]
(Back to the original subject…)
I don’t remember exactly the first time I saw my Lionel train move, but I do remember being the first one awake on Christmas morning of 1959. I walked into the living room and the Christmas tree was all lit up, wrapped presents everywhere, etc., but I especially noticed this one BIG box that had my name on it. I got that sense that this would be Something Special, no ordinary present, and ran into my parents bedroom to wake them up and they kept telling me to “be patient”. Fast-forward to later that day: The track was laid on a 4x8 piece of plywood straddling two sawhorses, and it had a flashing crossbuck and a signal mast that would shine either green or red - both of them way oversized, but I didn’t care - and that’s about all that I ever thought about or talked about for the next 6 months! I would always daydream about that green signal light and look forward to getting back down to the basement.
I actually ran a train on a real layout for the first time in February 2004 at a train show. I just joined my club just before their train show and had just bought a GO Train, a commuter train for those that don’t know. A bunch of the members wanted to see it run so I brought it down and ran it all day at the show. It was a big hit, everybody around our area has seen the real one and kids were yelling at their parent’s, “LOOK AT THE GO TRAIN”. I was kind of proud of it and now it has become a regular fixture at all the train shows we go to. When it doesn’t run people are always asking when the GO Train is going to come out, lol. The first time I actually ran a train was probably the late 60’s, early 70’s when I got a N scale set for Christmas, just a circle with some cars and a UP F7 I think it was.
I’ll have to correct the link when I get home. The link is from my front page of my site that I put up in December (since it’s a Christmas video), and during the rest of the year, like the rest of my YouTube videos, I have the embedding disabled, which is probably why that’s happening. If you’re on YouTube, look for the username chatanugadotorg.
I was 8, I think, and lo! and behold! set up next to the tree was an oval of a 3 rail Marx O27 set!!! It had a 2-4-2 steamer…and a gondola…and a caboose… and a flat car with “model” plastic cars on it…and a box car… and a water tower… and a manual switch for a siding…and a bumper for the siding…and telephone poles…and…and…I ran it round and round and round and round…until I was told to go to bed ! Oh My!
And for the following Easter that silly rabbit brought us a MarxYard Switcher set!!!
Yippee!!! That was how I got started with trains then. Then by age 19, there were other things to do. I got back into the hobby here 2 1/2 years ago after a local auction house featured trains of all types. I didn’t see any I liked, but got out my old N scale from my teen years, and decided I wanted the HO I always wanted, so into HO I went…and I’m now running trains round and round and round and round again! Oh My!
My brother had a train set in the basement which, of course, I was not allowed to touch. Not counting a battery operated something I had when really young my first experience running was my friends’ HO models, usually thrown together on his picnic table in the backyard before he had a layout. It was enough, though. My first was the Tyco Silver Streak, I used to leave it out at night to watch the glow in the dark things on it while in bed. It wasn’t much but I had arrived. The rest, of course, is history.
This was the same friend who one day uttered the fateful words… “Let’s go watch the real trains for a while”. I said yes,okay. Life would never be the same again.