I think this topic may have been asked here quite a while ago, but the CTT forums are becoming much more active and we’ve got so many new members coming over from the OGR forums, so I thought I’d ask it again. This has always been a topic that I find very interesting. So, what was your very first train?
For me, it was a Playmobil G scale set that I got when I was 4 years old. I suppose I had some “toy” trains before that, but that was my first real electric train set. It was a circle set with a diesel switcher, gondola and boxcar, but more track and cars were added on later.
My first vintage O gauge toy train (I had always wanted an “antique Lionel train” with 3-rail track as a kid after seeing pictures of my uncle’s Scout set from when he was a kid) was a boxed Marx 4-wheel plastic set (490 with NYC gondola & caboose) with a 6" DL&W hopper and lots of extra track. I was 10 years old at the time and was absolutely thrilled. Up until this point, besides the Playmobil, all I had was HO.
Now I’m 17 and have a very large collection of prewar and postwar toy trains (plus HO still), but my collecting all started out with that first Marx set.
The first one I remember is a Lionel 2020 vintage 1947 - 48. I don’t remember any toy trains prior to that. I still have the 2020 and have converted it to TMCC with a TAS unit. Over the years it has gotten much use, the flanges on the drivers are worn razor sharp. It still gets an occasional workout on my layout.
I had some toy trains, but my first electric set was a basic Lionel starter set with a 4-4-2 in UP paint. Later I got an Illinois Central single-truck switcher. Most of my cars are UP (my favorite railroad) but I also have a Northern Pacific side-bay caboose, Alaska Railroad tank car, and Southern Pacific stock car.
My first set was a Lionel 2056 Lionel Baby hudson with four cars. This was handed down from my sister. The first one that was bought for me was a Lionel 2379 Rio Grande F3. I really put that set through the wringer. I am amazed that it is still running great.
Thanks Sask, if this an old topic, this is a perfect time to start anew!!![tup][tup][tup]
My story is very similar to many. I got a Marx set when I was 4, putting the year at 1965. I played and played with that train. We added to it that Christmas, but the following Christmas (1966) I was given a 3429 Marine Corps helicopter car, see the problem???
Yes folks, at the tender young age of 5, I was exposed to one of today’s hot topics, COUPLER STANDARDS!!! As the Marx plastic knuckle couplers would not pull my new Lionel treasure. A decision had to be made!!!
Fortunately for me, the people across the street had a teenage son, who had lost interest in his 2328 Burlington GP-7 set, which I quickly adopted. And so it began.
Here’s a photo of my well played with treasure. The tail strut was lost early on, in one of it’s many crash landings. I do wish I had the box for that, but my mother said “What do you need to save the box for?” and promptly threw it away. This was one time, that mother DID NOT know best!!!
By the way, I love the duds Buckeye, and wi***hat I had had a set back then.
[:D]
My first set was my Grandfather’s standard gauge set he had as a child. It is a black 38 and an assortment of cars both passenger and freight. It went around the Christmas tree every year and since I had the old hook couplers and the “newer” latch ones I used string to tie them together. I still have everything and it still runs. I really didn’t get into o gauge until about 4 years ago.
I have told this story on other boards before but what the heck. I received my first train a 402E with 418,419.490 std Passenger cars from my father. He got it as a wish From my grandfather after he had been in the hospital for 1 year all but eleven days With scarlet fever, rheumatic fever, and then diphtheria. He started to recover and was reading books and magazines when my grandfather said that if he got better he could have anything he wanted. Well, he opened up a Lionel catalog and pointed to the set and said he wanted this. Well, long story short He came home and their it was on the living room floor and running all through the house with signals and stations and tunnels. My father gave me this set as my first set on Christmas 1969 And it has run every year since. I ran it so much as a kid that it had to be rerollered,rebrushed,rewired and rebushed.My father hadn’t seen it run in a few years but he saw it running Christmas 2002 . My dad passed on this past year but his love of trains has been passed down to me and now two my sons. They both have starter sets and get to run them on the Christmas platform. My wife says we have way to many trains now but I of course think she’s wrong because now I have to share them with my sons
It was 1953, I was 3. My dad worked in New York City. He happened to go to the Post Office auction of unclaimed property one month and brought home several boxes of trains, almost all of them Lionel. Although many were slightly damaged, some of them were in great shape. Included in the mix was a pair of Erie Alco’s, #2032, a #2343 Santa Fe F-3 (just the power unit), several small steam engines and a number of freightr cars. I still have all of the items that came home that year and run them on occasion. He continued to pick up trains at the auction for several years until his work moved him out of the city. Bob
I’m new to this forum, and looking for a toy train friendly place after leaving the OGR forum some months ago. I am an ex-HO scale modeler who discovered nirvana when Papa gave me his old '48 Lionel set with 2026 steamer and 4 freight cars. That was in 1987, and I’m still at it, buying occasional 027 and Railking stuff for my 4 by 8 layout. The layout is postwar and modern 027. I love this stuff, it’s so much fun, and I am very glad to have been rescued from the scale modeler mentality (which I consider a mental sickness)!
My first train set was a Marx tinplate win-up set. The caboose had a falgman that waved the flag as it travelled down the track. My first electric train was a Marx Allstate set from Sears, circa 1966.
Unfortunaltely, I do not have either set. The Marx Allstate set was sold in a yard sale in 1972 for $10.00. [:(]
My first O gauge train was the Lionel “Workin’ on the Railroad” set back around 1978, I think. This had a small steam engine/tender, a log dump car, a crane car, and a work caboose (I think that covers it). It also came with the plastic “log loader” building (which was plenty cool at 6 years old [:)] ) It had an odd little red box for the transformer, which I remember my father having trouble getting fixed when it died one time.
After that, My first HO set was a Tyco Railmaster 102. Stuck with HO until I finished college and got a real job.
“First” set that got me hooked on O gauge was the Lionel N&W Warhorse set. (J with the weathered coal cars)
I was started in this before I was born. My dad got a train for my older brother (or was it really for him, my brother is only 4 years older than me). This was somewhere around 1946 to 1948. My brother would have been 2 or 3 years old. What are the chances of dad letting him run it?
This was a Lionel PA turbine #671 freight set. As you see I still have it with all the boxes.
My very first train I got in 1954 is a Marx no-number wind-up black steam loco
with bell-ringer, NYC tender, #28500 LV hopper, #553 UnionTank Lines oil car, #20102 NYC two-tone caboose. Later years on my dad got me the #91257
Seaboard gondola and the #553 Santa Fe oil car, and a pair of Marx electric
switches that he converted to two-rail wind-up by removing the motors and the
center rails. He also hand-built a custom 90* crossing from two straights.
I still have this set complete with the track. It still looks great and runs like the
day I got it. (Christmas)
My first electric train is a Lionel #621 Jersey Central switcher (all dark blue), #2452 PRR gondola w/5 barrels, #6014 Frisco white boxcar, #6111 Lionel Lines log car w/3 logs, #6017 Lionel Lines caboose.
In later years my Dad got me the #6076 LV grey hopper and #6076 LV
black hopper. Track consisted of enough curves and straights to make
a figure-8, plus an uncoupling track, my first transformer was/is an old
Lionel Type “B” with multiple taps and multiple steps to control speed.
It, too, still works fine. It was originally may grandfather’s.
Still have this set and it, too, runs great and brings back good memories.
As I recall, the trains came from a hobby shop in Washington, DC (we
lived in an adjoining suburb). They may have been ordinary sets, but
they were top ‘o’ the line as far as I was concerned.
my first train was from santa, i was about 4-5 years old and didn’t know the difference between HO and O. this was bought piece by piece by my parents. It was a wis central gp-38, wis central hopper, gondola and 50’ boxcar. these are in pieces now in a box. i was very abusive to them, making them go up table and going full throttle over the edgeof the table onto the floor.[xx(][:O] poor HO, isn’t a gauge to be played with by small children like i was.
When I was 11 years ago I discoverd the magical world of O scale. i got a lionel catologe at a train show, and saw a cool starter train set called the pennsylvania flyer. i spent the whole summer saving up for the set. i had found it on traindoctor.com for $139.
-----and thats where it started!-----
[8D]
My first train was a 224E with 2224W tender, shell tank car, yellow gondola & Red caboose. I’m looking at it now as I write this. I later added a crane car & log dump car.
.
My first set was a Lionel Silver Star, found lying jumbled in a cardboard box under a table in a thrift store in the late seventies. $15.00. What a deal! It ran and still runs–when I manage to dig it out from under the rest of the collection.
Some nice stories here. EVERYONE has a first train in this hobby.
Lionel Nickel Plate Road Wabash Cannonball, train set! (1971 Consumer Catalog, page 2) It came with plastic 2-4-2 engine and tender. No headlight, no smoke, no whistle, but it came with a couple of cars, caboose, loop of tubular track and a bright red transformer. [(-D][wow]
My first o-gauge I got was a Lionel Lines set about ten years
ago, I was 40 when I received this set. My first train set was a
HO by Tyco. That was 40 years ago.
O-Well better late than never.[:D]
Thanks
Keith
