I remember when i was in first grade my first model train set was a bachmann pacific flyer set. I am wondering what you guys had to start out with?
The earliest train I remember is a Fleischmann train with 0-6-0 engine and cars that I got around 3rd or 4th grade. I still have it and it still runs.
I remember seeing a sheet of plywood with American Flyer track attached, but the train was long gone - I think my dad bought it when I was an infant.
Paul
Mine was a plastic Lionel set.
Mine was the Life-Like Complete Model Railroad. Had everything pictured on the box. Grass mat and all.
(Not my photo)
Mine was a Marx freight set with a F3 in B&O livery a Christmas present. I think I was in second grade at the time. I remember admiring it in the Western Auto store window.
Hello All,
Mine was a Tyco Chattanooga Choo-Choo set; which included an Operating Crane Car Set, along with a separate Hopper Car Unloading set.
I was so enamored by the Hopper Car Unloading set that almost 40-years later I designed an entire 4’x8’ pike around these cars and their action.
Hope this helps.
My first train set was a Lionel 027 set, probably used, that I got for my 6th birthday. At the time, my dad was in med school, so money was extremely tight.
My brothers and I got a big HO scale Tyco set for Christmas when I was 12 that featured a UP Pacific.
I still have the trains from both sets; although I haven’t set up the Lionel stuff in decades.
Somthing by Tyco, but I do not know which set.
-Kevin
Mine was a standard gage lionel 2-4-2 with three passenger cars and four freight cars. Got it used for Christmas in 1946. Track plan took up the whole living room. Set was built in the 1936-39 era.
Are we separating “model trains” and “toy trains”? I guess mine was kinda both, since it was an early 1960s American Flyer “S” set, a toy train which was built to full scale size. It also used track with individual plastic ties, kinda like Atlas snap-track only S gauge.
Back in Germany, when I was five or six, a Märklin 0-6-0 with two freight cars and a a short (2-axle) passenger car on a 7’ x 3.5’ particle board. In the first year, the board was bare and I had to build houses with Legos.
Over the years, until I was about 10, this was built up stepwise to a double loop with a figure 8 (wiring is easy with Märklin), working catenary, working signals (even the catenary had insulated stretches which were unpowered when the signal was red), and lots of scenery. All this was done by my mom (God bless her soul) in the 2-3 weeks before Christmas each year.
Cox HO scale train set with a Burlington GP35. Christmas present back when I was about 7.
About 1952 or so, got a Lionel 027 railroad. And some Plasticville. A couple years later I got an orange Lionel reversing gang car. I watched that thing for hours. Let it run into my hand and it reversed. Hey, I was about 7 years old.
https://www.tandem-associates.com/lionel/lionel_trains_50_gang_car.htm
And a few years later, we got a couple 4x8 sheets of plywood, made them into tabes and put them in an L shape, right out of the Atlas track plan guide. Athearn rubber band drive GP9 and a little Docksider.
Take a look at my avatar. Lionel O27 set with a pair of track loops, automatic crossing gate, semaphore signal and whistle shanty plus lots of Plasticville buildings for me and my little brother. I was 5 he was 3. Layout expanded over the years.
Cox military train, Christmas 1976… I loved that set.
Simon
Hogwarts Express
Dave
It was a used pre-war Lionel 0-6-0 set on a 4x7 plywood base, painted green or brown as appropriate, with green dyed sawdust sprinkled into the green pqint. Came to me before I can remember. Still ran last time I tried it. An O gauge American Flyer Zepher came with it, but it was (still is) in rough shape.
Have fun,
Richard
It must have been before I started school. It was an O scale Lionel set with a steam engine.
Mine was a Lionel O train set with tracks. I then bought lots of O tracks but then soon realize that O took too much space so I switched to HO. I still have the Lionel train set and would set it up in my house during Chritmas…
Jerry
At birth, my aunt bought me the Lionel PRR Congressional Set and my father the Wabash F3 set. The “platform” became a Christmas tradition. They still run today on my O gauge layout under the HO. Their memory and traditions turned into a lifetime hobby which I am very thankful for.