Joel
Amazing that at 1 yr old you have memories of trains. I have memories between 1 and 2 of certain things but my first memory of real trains was about 3 and that’s what hooked me on model trains (I was a few blocks from the New Haven 4 track electric line in NYC in 1959-68 and even closer to the 3rd Ave El. Go figure!
My Dad didn’t keep much from his childhood but he did keep his Lionel trains. They sat in the garage. For as long as I could remember I asked him to set them up. Finally when I was in about the 6th grade (1986) he set them up. They were every bit as fun as I imagined. We moved a couple of years later and they went back into storage, but that was where it started.
I set them up again for Christmas 2004. They’ve stayed up since, though they moved to the basement.
When I was 38 (12 years ago) I had open heart surgery and was going nuts with boredom. My wife suggested a hobby and since I was fascinated with trains I started to collect N scale. After about a year, a friend of mine who owned a hobby store talked me buying a MTH Dash-8. And I have been hooked since.
I have no idea! No one in my family had any interest in trains - whether toy. model, or full size. We did not live near any rail tracks. We did travel on a train a couple of times a year on a short run to the nearby port. Somehow I just developed an interest in trains when about 11 years old. I was never given a trainset - when I wanted a train set I had to work to earn the money to buy it myself - a small clockwork Hornby set. That was over 60 years ago! My collection includes the same sort of train today. Trains just seemed to be something I liked, so I cannot answer the question.
Colin Duthie
My brothers and I had a huge (to us) HO figure 8 my dad built on a ping-pong table that took up one of our bedrooms. We enjoyed playing soldiers and running the trains like Gomez Addams. My dad had a pre-war 248 and its two passenger cars, tin-plate freight cars, a 2-6-4, and an R transformer which he had refurbished at Madison Hardware in the early 1980s. But he never really set them up and when the layout came down because my sister was born and the room was needed, I didn’t miss them.
I really entered the hobby after discovering Model Railroader in our local library about 8 years ago - I read through five years of issues, bought an N scale train set and eventually built a 3 ft by 5 ft British outline layout. I had a private epiphany when I realized it would be difficult for me to work in this scale as I got older and I frankly found reaching for scale fidelity daunting. I sold the lot and bought a Lionel Ballyhoo circus train set. I loved it. Eventually I claimed my dad’s Lionels and the MPC-era sets of my two brothers. I built a basement layout - then another, and discovered trolleys as both an affordable and fun sub-section of the hobby and here I am!
I have not a clue. As far as I can remember trains are like a drug can’t get enough of them. No mater what scale, real, paintings I’ll always stop and look at them. Drives the wife nuts.
Dad had a Lionel Santa Fe loco and a few cars with a loop of track when I was a kid. Then, I got a HO set when I was older, maybe about 12? That disappearred (???) when I was in High School. I used to read the model railroad mags at the library in HS though. Kids and I got into LEGO Harry Potter stuff and added a LEGO HP Train. Then, I found a HO Hogwarts Express, add a Dewitt Clinton set and some track, but the trains were just too small… Went to a store with my FiL and saw some O gauge stuff and got hooked. LEGO’s are put away now and so are the HO trains. I still have all that EZ Track and a DCC controller, which I’m for sure saving for an ON30 line at some point.
Jim, do you still have that Santa Fe? Would look real good on your layout.
Probably my first fascination was the old and sadly departed O (or Q) gauge layout at Chicago’s Museum of Science and Industry. I recall seeing it and being fascinated by it but none of the details. Apparently I had to be dragged away from the thing.
My father brought out his set at Christmas circa 1973 (I was six) and I was hooked pretty much for life. He soon grew to fear (with good reason) young boys playing with his immaculate postwar engine and cars and next Christmas there was a MPC set from Sears (#8310, if anyone’s interested - I still have it, too) under the tree. Sadly, the engine appears to have finally given up the ghost, but it has good reason.
I completely fell away from the hobby from about age 14 to age 36 as far as active involvement, but was still enthralled by toy trains. After winning a case that involved a Southern Railway easement, or what was purported to be such an easement, I spotted a Lionel Southern PS-4 in the window of a LHS. I bought it. Other rather uninformed purchases followed.
Over the past two years or so my interest has acclerated dramatically. In 2002 I had four engines. Today I have eleven. My layout was constructed last fall with some plans in the works for expansion. My wife sometimes chastens me about the costs, but is generally tolerant. I’ve obviously learned a great deal from reading this forum and simply doing - building the layout provided half a hundred lessons that are critical for the next one.
Oh- I finally got that PW set at age forty.
I still remember my 2nd Christmas when my parents got my brother this battery powered train set (looked a lot like brio). Pretty soon they realized that I like the trains more than him. When I was 5 or 6 they got my an HO set an next thing you know I was a train fanatic! My grandfather had a huge HO layout in his basement and here was nothing I loved more than hanging out in his basement, running the trains, and listening to him tell stories about his American Flyer trains and his years in the army.
For my 9th birthday I asked my dad for an HO Amtrak set. My dad saw a lionel Amtrak set and asked if thats what wanted… I said YES and 12 years later here I am.
Grayson, it’s long gone. Was in an open top box in dad’s basement for years and years, then at some point some of us kids (can’t remember if I was in on this or not) played with it on the concrete floor wthout tracks down etc - it ended up in pieces and thrown away.
My Dad would bring out the Lionel trains when I was a kid and put them around the Christmas tree. They where his from when he was a kid (Post-war Steamers, ATSF F3’s and a switcher and some freight cars). As a kid I always enjoyed riding on the Metra with my parents to downtown Chicago also and we would go to the then Marshall Fields. My Dad bought a few small Marklin trains there and over time he had aquired many other Bachmann, Tyco and Atherton HO trains from flee markets and garage sales. But Lionel had me hooked. I can’t explain it they just look and sound like real trains even without realistic sounds and smoke and they are far less delicate. I especially fondly remember getting the Pennsylvania Alco FA passenger set in the late 80’s. I will forever be an O gauge fan of all manufacturers.
When I was 7 years old in 1957, I received a Lionel 205 Missouri Pacific train set for Christmas.
Two Years ago, when visiting a local train show, all the memories of that train set under the Christmas tree came back. So now I have been building this Lionel Postwar 027 layout. All of the engines, cars, accessories and scenery that I only dreamed about as a child have come true!
What sparked my interest in toy trains? My love of real trains, I suppose. I’m really not sure just how or why I came to love trains, but I’ve been enamored by them for longer than I can remember.
I can pinpoint the source of my love of O gauge toy trains specifically, however. Back in the 50’s, my uncle had a Lionel Scout set. It was no longer around by the time I was born, but there is a photograph of my mom, aunt and uncle playing with it. From the first time I saw that picture as a little kid, I HAD to have a train like that! This lead to a quest for an “antique Lionel train”. I had HO and G scale, but still desperately wanted a Lionel. I can remember as a kid being under the false assumption that Lionel trains and three-rail track were no longer made and were all collector’s items worth thousands of dollars. My dad once put an ad in the paper looking for Lionel and the only response we got was a woman with a bottom-of-the-line set from the 60’s with a 1060 or simmilar steam engine that she wanted $500 for. It had the box and I remember her saying that it was especially rare because the number on the engine and the set number on the box didn’t match up! And no-we did not buy it!
When I was 10, I finally got a vintage O gauge train. It was a boxed Marx four-wheel plastic set from the late 60’s/early 70’s with a 490 steam engine, NYC tender, blue NYC gondola and bright orange NYC Pacemaker caboose, plus a six-inch tin DL&W hopper car in electric blue (to this day one of my all-time favourite Marx cars) and a big pile of track. I was ecstatic! My O gauge collection slowly grew with another Marx plastic set and a couple of Lionel cars and when I was 12, I finally got my first Lionel engine, a 1955 600 M-K-T NW-2 switcher. I’m 20 now and have lost none of my love for toy trains.