Really enjoying reading these nostalgic posts. Mine was Christmas 1952 Lionel steamer with two freight cars and caboose. I was 5, and actually allowed to run the transformer and the whistle on our 4 by 8 plywood, after careful lessons from dad. We gave it all alway to a neighbor’s 5 year old when we went to rubber band HO in 1960. What a mess those engines were! Would love to have that Lionel set now!
My first train I owned (as in, not playing with my Dad’s Lionel O gauge set) was a Lionel HO set of the Freedom Train that ran around the country during the bicentennial. I still have it carefully packed away.
I received small battery powered O guage circle when I was 8 for Xmas (which a friend broke shortly there after). Then I found a Life Like set my stepson had got one year before I met him He was 9 when I set it up for him he lasted about 10 minutes at it. I’ve been at it for over twenty years now.
My first set was a Tyco Santa Fe
This engine still runs although its missing a side rail and a horn on the dummy unit. I can’t remember what cars came with it though as my set soon became a mix of anything that could be found at garage sales and such.
I had an uncle that liked to party, He bought me a six pack of beer refers cars! I was like 12 when he bought this and all my friends were like “what is Tuborg” [:)]
Weird, I was about to write the same thing, same year, same age, and probably the same set. It was the 2-4-2 steam engine, iirc.
Regards
Ed
Man, I got you all beat.
When my grandfather learned that he finally had a grandson (my dad was 36 when I was born), he immeditely started making me a wooden toy train. I had a steam engine (2-2-0), some boxcars, and a caboose by the time I was 6 months old! The couplers were linked eye hooks, the wood was unfinished, and the wheels were wood discs…
But, I still have them now, 30 years later.
Paul A. Cutler III
Weather Or No Go New Haven
My first train set was a Lionel 0-27 freight featuring the Pennsy turbine 6-8-6 w/tender.
The loco had Magnetraction along with smoke. The tender, with Lionel Lines on it, contained the whistle. Now here’s the hazy part - I don’t recall all lthe cars, for this all took place back in the 1940’s.
Over the years I added as many cars as I could afford - all from a trainstore that sold used stuff. My solitary freight grew and grew and before I knew it, I had a competing passenger train pulled by an NW-2 switcher. The cars were green and they were the stubby 0-27’s with names like Chatham - Maplewood and Hillside (found those in the catalog!).
I graduated up to a 190 watt KW transformer leaving my 90 watt original for other duties.
Anyway, the original set had an operating log car (black), a black Bucyrus Erie crane car and a dark gray wrecking caboose w/searchlight - DL&W. I just cannot recall with accuracy what the other two cars were - but the set did come with a total of 5 cars. What a great Christmas present back in 1947 or 48.
I have tried to locate that set in the Standard Catalog of Lionel trains (1945-1969) by David Doyle, but can only get close. Oh well, it’s fun to look back through those pages at the cars I added and the cars I wished I could have! We have all been there.
All those great Lionel trains of my childhood vanished after I joined the service in 1956. Around 1966, I decided to get back into model railroading and started my son off with a Tyco HO freight set - a bit “much” for a 4 year old. Anyway, within less than a year, that starter set damned near filled up the 4 x 8 ft board in our basement. Each year I added a train set for each new arrival in the family - and then of course, some more as the budget would permit.
Today, retired for 16 years, all of those HO trains are within display cases in my trainroom. I have the new model RR of my dreams - HO - in my basement. But you know what? T
For my fourth birthday, I recieved a Marx windup set, that came with a figure eight plastic track set. For Xmas the next year I got a Marx electric. When six I got an AF set with two locos and about fifteen cars. Played with that til I was eight and discovered a boxcar kit from a company called Mantua at my LHS. Been building in HO ever since. I’m now 53.
My first train set was the Marx Big Rail Work Train. I wanted one so badly that year but the local JC Pennys was out, except for the display. My dad paid the manager double for the display model just so I could have that train.
I still see them from time to time on eBay. I should probably get another one…
Lionel steam with3-4 cars and caboose.
In the early '50s. I ran that train around the living room countless times.
It is too bad kids don’t enjoy it anymore because of video games. ( I know some do)
Jon - Las Vegas
My first trains were from a Tyco F9 Santa Fe set my dad gave me in a Christmas, along with some Tyco operating stuff, like a UP container crane and station. Funny thing is that Dad played more with it than me, I was supposed to watch only because I may have broken it, but the boxes made preaty cool walls for my GI joes’ base. I was 6 then.
Hey Siberianmo
My Dad had the same set! He just recently gave it over to me to protect and cherish. He had bought it in 43.
We have a few extra cars that were accumulated, but I am pretty sure the two you are forgeting were a grey flat car that had some kind of black transformer on it and a green gondola that carried three grey/white (milk?) containers.
That engine still runs great and the tender car whistles like new. I even still have some of the pills you drop in to make it smoke.
My first train set was battery operated steam engine. It had a place to insert D size batteries like a flash light and ran on O guage track. Wish I had it now. Most of my old stuff I have now is from when I was a teenager. HO Athearn and Tyco, little Bachmann and Mantua.
RMax1
A Hornby OO scale set. I still have the loco though it’s been rebodied and has more than a few other new parts - a bit like the proverbial “grandfather’s axe” (3 new heads, 4 new handles, same axe!). If I remember rightly the set had a blue 4-wheel coach, 4 wheel open wagon, 4 wheel tanker and a 4 wheel closed van painted in “Weetabix” livery (the bodyshell from which I still have somewhere, awaiting a repaint into a more realistic livery and a new kitbuilt chassis, as the bodyshell’s actually a reasonable model of a British steam-era van.
My first train set was back in the 50’s. It was a set that you had to turn a key on the engine, like a clock to get it to move
Tyco train set for Christmas, circa 1975 or so at age 10.
Still running some of the cars for my four-year-old, albeit updated with body-mounted Kadee #5s and better-running trucks/wheelsets. Don’t have the original loco (IIRC, a fairly large GP in BN Green), but do have my second loco, an AHM Plymouth MDT.
Brian “About to turn 40… or 14, depending on who you ask” Pickering
My first electric train was a Marx set the Christmas before I was 3. (2 2/3 yrs.)(1952) I had gotten a wind-up train the Christmas before but my parents got tired of me constantly asking “Wind it Daddy”, “Wind it Mommy”. So I got the Marx set (which I still have, a little worse for wear but it still runs) and the thing I remember most is myself and my cousin Johnny sitting on the couch watching my Dad and my Uncle John on the floor playing with the train.
Mine was a wind-up Marx set with little bright red four-wheel passenger cars. New York Central. Second was a Marx electric freight hauled by a 2-4-2. New York Central. Third was an Athearn F-7 HO scale diesel unit. Southern Pacific (which made more sense than New York Central, seeing as I lived in California). Been HO ever since. Still have the Marx electric boxed away in the garage. It’s still New York Central. Still runs. Every now and then I set it up under the Christmas tree.
Tom [:P]
Actually, silverchampion, I’d forgotten about that one. I had a windup train, too, with a brightly lithographed metal engine. I was about three or four. My mom for years told the story about her son’s first train. He and daddy were upstairs playing with it, and after about half an hour she heard a little voice ask, “Daddy, can I do it now?” She got a big kick out of ‘my’ first train! I’m not bitter, though. Dad and I had lots of fun on railfan trips and with HO in later years. Those were golden years. At 57, I’m still wound up about trains, thanks to him.
When I was 7 years old, my dad took me to the local swap meet in Portland, OR, and we picked up some trains. A Tyco 1976 set (u-boat and caboose), an Athearn F40, and a few pieces of rolling stock. That weekend, a 4x6 layout was born, and it stayed with me for over a decade. 19 years later, I still have the '76 caboose, and the Athearn, and almost all of the cars, as well as the station and the farmhouse from the layout.
-dave