I was given my first O gauge set when I was 5 and that’s what I am used to. I still have and run my original set. I have tried N and never tried HO although my brother got into HO. N just wasn’t my cup of tea. It’s O gauge for me forever I suppose.
I love O guage because of its heft and near non derailability, and durability. I also love it because of the all time legendary Lionel postwar and prewar trains. I am fascinated by antiques and postwar and prewar trains are obviously that so they go together hand in hand for me. I also love it for the awesome sounds and many features, like a flickering firebox as one example. You can almost feel the power of the real steam engine in a high end model from MTH or Lionel. Oh and the SMOKE. Trains are supposed to SMOKE!!!
Thanks everyone so far for there personal stories.
Like some posters said that HO is more for realism, the one guy at work that was “telling me to be careful to not get too invested” is one of those realism guys. But then what is funny is that one of the items that he is warning me about is the cost between HO (or N for that matter) and O. But being a smaller scale he is buying a lot more track and switches, etc than I would due to the space. Like I keep telling him, I enjoy the fun of running the trains with the accessories.
Thanks again for the posts, hope more keep coming…
For me Lehigh, I too like the Lehigh Valley railroad and I found there’s just nothing available in that road in HO, so I out of necessity I went with Lionel 027! [:D]
Okay, back to planet Earth.
My story echos the others. Got my very first train set before I was even a week old… Dad couldn’t wait another month for Christmas. Then, like many others, you want to relive some of those childhood memories and next thing you know, you’re buidling a layout and on this forum yacking about trains again. Ah, the fun.
I really do like the Lehigh Valley. Not only do I have a lot of memories of watching the Lehigh as a kid, but it was such a non-conventional quirky railroad with their own set of rules … the perfect line to model in 3-rail. I do a lot of repainting though, and have lots of stuff in the Lehigh. K-Line Alco FA’s in the snowbird scheme and yellow jacket scheme, K-Line S-2’s in the Cornell red, yellow jacket and wide yellow band scheme. A Lionel NW2 in the wide yellow band scheme too, plus some steamers and Industrial Switchers. Yeah, it might not be precisely prototypical, but again, the Lehigh Valley was in their own league.
I started off in O gauge with my dad’s trains, he would set them up around Christmas in the basement up north in Stratford CT. When I was about 8 years old I started setting up the track and by 10 I was helping to wire the 022 switches. Still have two trains that are my dad’s, they are from 1939 & 1941, a freight set with a 249E steam engine and a passenger set with a 224E steam engine, the older engines still run when put on the track & with their respective cars.
Currently I am into three differant scales of trains; O gauge, S gauge, and H.O. What I have found to be true about H.O. verses O gauge as for space requirements, they both need the same amount of space for basic curves. 027 track is just a little smaller in diameter when set-up as just a basic set of curves than H.O, so where is the space saving?? S Gauge needs more space than 027 or 031 curves, but it looks nicer as it only has two rails. H.O. track has flexible track but then you can hardly run anything on the smaller curves.
In the past 12 years or so I have been buying differant brands of motive power and rolling stock for my layout, not one brand loyal. Williams has some nice engines at really affordable prices so I have almost a dozen Williams engines. Weaver has some nice special run freight cars every now & then so I have a few of them but they are shelf queens as I have had trouble with Weaver on my tracks. I mainly have older Lionel engines, before 1995, a few newer freight and passenger cars but that’s all. Most of my transformers are older Lionel except for two MTH Z1000’s that power my MTH engines.
I have tried Lionel’s Fastrac and I am not that impressed with it mainly due to excessive costs for small straight pieces of track and the extremely high cost of switches for Fastrac. O gauge tubular track is much more flexible and less expensive.
Interesting stuff. I was born in early 1/1951. Santa actually started collecting the trains before I was born and before he knew I was going to be a boy (if you do the math). A child’s sex was a surprise back then.
I am like a lot of guys and got my first Lionel when I was 4. First engine Santa brought me was the FA1 Alco AA Rock Island 2031 diesels (1952 flat roof) and 3 of the silver Streamliners 24XX series . Then I got the 2046 Hudson steamer (3 window cab from either 1950 or 1951) with freight cars. Later a new 2023 UP FA1 Alco AA set too (1950, wonder where Santa had that hidden). The play value was there at the time. Construction on the permanent 2 train layout with a siding and a handmade (paper machet/chicken wire over a wood frame) double track mountain tunnel was launched in the basement shortly after the first train arrived and soldiered on for about 2 decades. And more engines and cars too.
Picture one of those huge green Remco Bulldog Tanks with the firing cannon parked on the trainboard with those completely way too small Army guys, and the #115 train station serving as the barracks. Sky King’s Cesna 310B was parked there. Some Revell 1/24 scale Big Daddy Roth hot rod custom cars (from kits). Eldon (?) 1/32 slot car track was squeezed in there as well for a time. Somehow scale and realism never trumped play value when I was a kid. Although I got heavily into slot car racing at commercial tracks and dabbled in HO for a while in the 1960s, the O gauge stuff had me hooked.
The play value was still important to me when I gave my son his first train set. More recently, the play value continued with my granddaughter, though those green plastic Army soldiers we used to haul around in the freight cars have now been replace
gauge just has something HO/N just dosnt. first of all I think the size is perfect, HO is too small to me, I want a train I can really run and have a good time with, not one that moves around a bit and I cant handle without thinking about breaking things off. the sounds and smoke are also another factor. one of the best things in the world is when someone into HO or N hears the growl of a postwar F3 and says " wow, that sounds awesome" or something along those lines… HO is also very sensitive. I had a set or two and the train would always randomly stop because of bad track connection and what not. it was a pain. sure its cheaper, but your losing alot of fun.