What was your first train?

[mitchelr]

My first train was LIONEL SET #1527 from 1955. I was a year old when Santa brought it. Still have the set and pictures of the set under the Christmas tree. The set has a 1615 STEAM SWITCHER WITH 1615T TENDER, a 6462-125 RED GONDOLA, a 6119 WORK CABOOSE and a 6560 GRAY CRANE.

Still runs great, even after all the abuse I gave it as a kid. [:D][:D]

[Anonymous]

revell n guage santa fe with club car......some how santa set it up and tested it. i know this because the transformer was warm on christmas morning. sorry...1967

[darianj]

I'm relatively new to the hobby. The bug that bit me was the Lionel "Polar Express". I'm slowly building on to my collection, piece by piece. I'm looking for to having a nice collection in the future that I can pass on to my son.

[Anonymous]

My first train was the Lionel O-27 Rail Blazer set on Christmas of 1987 that my mom got for me. I gotten spoiled to LIonel from my late uncles who used to collect quite of bit of trains back in the day. My other uncle and I used to pu***he dummy locos around on the track by hand, it was so fun. I still have the Rail Blazer set to this day, even though I unfortunately had to throw away the original box (got badly damaged from a flood) the little DC-powered steam engine still works, along with the small cars that came with the set. In addition, I remember my mom also gotten a few extra straights and a switch to add with the set.

Definitely a set I will eventually preserve. And the rest is history.

Chris

[BillP1]

Trains were probably not real plentiful during World War Two, but when I was 2 or 3 years old, my folks were able to get a Louis Marx "scale" freight train for me.

I still have it on the shelf, and the Girard whistling station that was added to my "train stuff" in the late '40s or early '50s is on my layout now.

In the early '50s, I took one of the Marx cars and replaced one of the trucks with a lionel truck so that I could pull the Marx freight cars with a Lionel engine and with Lional cars ahead of the Marx cars as I received a few Lionel cars as presents. (That car has since been converted back to it's original truck.)

At the time, I wasn't bothered by the disparity between the 3/16" to the foot Marx cars and the 1/4" to the foot Lionel cars. I was happy to have them all.

----------------------- Bill

[Birds]

N gauge steam and an HO Santa Fe when I was about 4. I think one of them was for my Dad.

I remember that I wasn't allow to run them on my own but had to ask permission first. What? Ask permission to run trains? Yah, well, the best gift ever given to me was a broken clock and a set of jewelers screw drivers...

What happened to the trains? The N gauge wore out by the time I was in high school. The HO died about the same time when the power pack burned up. It turns out that the do not make good power sources for electro magnets. I still have the HO set in a box in storage - still disassembled...

[Anonymous]

my first was the lionel Heavy Iron Starter set. i got it for christmas i think in '82 or '83. it came with a rio grande 2-4-2, great northern boxcar. UP flat car, nickel plate road gondola and a rio grande caboose. that year i also got the cheerios bilboard reefer and the lifesavers tank car. i dont run the set too often these days but i do run the cheerios and lifesavers cars alot.

[crip]

A Tyco or Bachman HO Silver Streak set,(I don't remember who made it) from my wife on our first Christmas as man and wife.She had no clue what she started!!! My first O gauge set from my uncle the week of vacation I took to celebrate our 25th anniversery.

[drums1427]

Mine was a Tyco Santa Fe HO set when I was about 8. Now that I'm 29 & getting back into it I stepped it up to Lionel. My first Lionel was a Chessie Flyer O27 I won on ebay. Probably overpaid but Chessie is sentimental for my wife & I. We were born & raised in Hampton Roads, VA (now live in the armpit of the state known as Northern VA). Used to see a lot of Chessie & Norfolk & Western as a kid.

[Anonymous]

C&NW Baldwin diesel switcher....

I had that set headed by the switcher.

I bought one 5 years ago and once I played with it a while I was amazed to find it wasn't as it had been when I was 10!

I sold it.

Later I bought the same engine by Kline and wish I knew what cars came with that set. I would re peurchase them in O gauge.

After that I lost almost all my trains in a flood and I am hoping as I dig out the stuff form the storage locker I put them in now ,that I can find it in working order.

[Anonymous]

In the 40s - Dad got me some used trains which i still have - tinplate Lionel 253 & cars, 249 loco & tender; an American Flyer something....all beat up but started undergoing long restoration.

[Anonymous]

In 1967 I received a Pennsy Flyer type train for xmas with a figure eight track and a piece of uncoupling track.. Nothing to mount it on it sat on the basement floor.

[laz 57]

Lionel Line Freight set circa 1957 the year I was born.
laz57

[espeefoamer]

My first train set was an American Flyer with two freight trains.It had a Reading Atlantic4-4-2,and a C&NW Baldwin diesel switcher,about 8-10 freight cars and two cabooses.The track layout was a large oval,with two switches putting a smaller oval inside.My brother and I got this set for Cristmas around 1959-61.
I still have all the equipment.

[Anonymous]

Mine was the 6 panel All Aboard Set when I was 6 years old. It was after Gilbert went out of business, so it wasn't the standard set, and had a lot of extra cars like two Mobil Oil cars, two crane cars, a track cleaning car, Santa Fe hopper, caboose, searchlight. I still have all of it, although the 21108 ( I think that's the number) Atlantic engine has fallen apart.

[Kaufu2]

My first train was American Flyer's All Aboard 6 panel set, with the Casey Jones locomotive, 2 cars and a caboose in 1963. I still have it, with most of the 'scenics' surviving my childhood. It is set up on a piece of plywood in the family room. Sometimes it is nice just to turn the train on and watch it go round and round after a stress filled day at work.

[Anonymous]

my first train set was a tyco ho scale Santa Fe what ever it was... it was fun till the engine fell off the plywood that was atop our pool table...

it broke the connector and that was the end of that...

then a friend bought me a lionel starter set, central flyer for christmas, and thats where It stands... I do have a few boxes of tyco HO stuff in the barn... someday I may get it all out for fun...

[bogaziddy]

My (or should I say, my dad's) first train was an American Flyer Hudson locomotive freight set I received at Christmas when I was just 4 years old (1947). We would set it up around the Christmas Tree and my dad wired up a large (not to mention way out of scale) standard gauge semaphore to the track. If I was anywhere near that darned semaphore when the train went by why, I'd nearly jump out of my skin when that semaphore arm flipped positions and emitted all kinds of buzzing sounds while spewing ozone far and wide. I never got used to that - I was startled every time - much to the laughter and amusement of all the grown-ups in the room. No one was amused though when I decided the following Summer to 'play trains' in my back yard sand box with my Hudson. No, that didn't go over to well with the 'Old Man'.

After a trip to the repair shop the Hudson survived and that train set grew into a railroad 'empire' (at least that's what my ping-pong table layout full of plasticville buildings looked like through my young eyes). An Alco PA passenger set came along in the early fifties (Rock Island Rocket with streamlined passenger cars - one a vista dome).

Funny how the whole world seemed so much larger back then. In my teen years ( you know, when we all thought we knew everything) I traded all my tinplate stuff in for (more realistic) HO guage equipment. Oh how I wish I could have all my old tinplate trains back ... I'm trying to duplicate all my old AF equipment with modern Lionel stuff - an expensive undertaking but still cheaper than collecting postwar duplicates.

Older and hopefully wiser, but always a kid at heart -
The High Bogaziddy Mahesh Maserati (Corgi !, of course) Top Ramen

[pbjwilson]

My first train set was an Aurora Postage Stamp N gauge passenger set. I was a 60's kid and slot car freak. Sometime in the late 60's Aurora did some cross promoting and I just had to have a N gauge train set. Santa obliged and several layouts insued. Now 30 plus years later and layouts in N to G I find myself enthralled with tinplate and wind-ups. Go figure.

[Anonymous]

In the summer of 1951 my 1st job was working on a milkroute for 50 cents a day, and by the time the Christmas sales were on I had enough to buy a Scout. $12.95 if I recall. In spite of all the bad press they get, it is a good runner.

My 2nd train was last Christmas. My kids and grandkids got tired of listening to me bellyache about how I never got a train for Christmas, and had to buy my own. It is Lionel's Southern RR diesel freight set,, In the past year it has been supplemented with a UP Hudson loco and several more cars.

Bob


The absence of sparks, blue smoke and heat is usually a really good sign.

[Anonymous]

Me first train was a Sante Fe Alco F7-A the same kind my father picked out for his first train

[SPFan]

QUOTE: Originally posted by ole1

First train : Marx wind up handed down from older cousin. 040 engine,NYC tender, Bessimer boxcar and NYC caboose. First electric train Lionel set with 2035 engine just as pictured in the 1950 catalog. I was seven.

Wow! Deja vu. I got a Marx windup in 1949 (age 4). It barely lasted a year and I don't remember any of the individual pieces. In 1950 I got a 2035 freight set . I sold it all 10 years later so I could buy some HO stuff. 5 years ago I recreated my old 2035 set and haven't stopped since!

Pete

[jwse30]

Mine was an MPC starter set called the "black river freight" I believe. This set came with a 2-4-0, a Rio Grande tender (with sound of steam "chugger"), a hopper, gondola, flatcar, and caboose.

For about 5 years I would receive something to add to the set; a crossing gate, a banjo signal, track and switches, a station, streetlights, bumpers, or an occational building kit.

I never really parted with my trains (like so many did), though there were a few years where they didn't get used as much as others. I've also lost a few pieces of some of those building kits. The crossing gate and banjo signal are still on my layout (both have needed work since I received them), and once in a blue moon I still run my original train.

I was really surprised to see how many posts on this thread listed an MPC set as their first train.

J White

[Frank53]

I don't kjnow that I had a "first" train, as our trains were just "the trains", and they were in our house as far back as I can remember. I found some home movies recently that I had converted to video that show me at Christmas time playing with trains, and I could not have been more than four or five, but I don't recognize or remember the trains. It was a small layout - about 2' x 3' and the entire train is ona trestle and it is zooming on an oval about a mile a minute. SUrprised it didn't run right off teh track.

All of the trains we had I still have.

When you think about it, it is really amazing that every last piece of Lionel equipment that is upwards of 50 years old still works like the day it got stored away. The tracks were dirty and when you first powered them up there were lots of center rail sparks, but the stuff just worked great. I can't think of much else that could be 50 years old, not used for 35 years that could come out of a box and after only a little clean up and oiling works just as well as it did 35 years ago.

I wonder if the new stuff of today could match that level of durability and be just as good out of teh box in 2040 as it was in 2005.

Unfortunately, I don't think I have 35 years left to test the theory.

[Anonymous]

I had Two. My father bought me a Milwaukee special when I was born. He purchased the add on cars up till 76 when he passed away. My mother and him were seperated at the time and somehow my train ended up my grandmothers house along with some other items. I did not know of the train untill I was in high school and my brothers told me that I had a train at grandma's house. Eventully I worked the nerve to ask her about the trains and
she took me to a spare bedroom and pulled out a grocer bag that 5 or 6 boxes of cars, she then pointed up to the top of the closet and thier was the train set.
We took it all down stairs and set the up a little oval, Played for 2 to 3 hours. We then packed it all back up and I told her she need to keep safe untill someday when I get my own home. Leaving it their I know made her happy.

The First set that I ever played with was a Heavy Metal that Mother and step farther purchased for me on my 12 birthday.

I love and play with both, The Milmaukee Road set was completed in the first year of my marriage, My wife had no idea what she was getting into at the first train show.[B)]

[1688torpedo]

My First train was a lionel Broadway Limited that I got for Christmas in 1974 and I still have it to this day. It runs very good The other train in the house at that time was my fathers prewar 1688 set it did not run then( it does now) Me & my older Brother used to try to get it to run.Sometimes it would other times it didn't .It has been restored and now resides at my Brothers house. NYC Fan that is a nice picture of your Berk & General set you could print up Christmas postcards from that...Keith

[Anonymous]

Hello,

These stories and photos are so great, I printed them out, cut them out of the paper, and pasted them into a composistion book so I can read them all the time.

Bert and Mary Poppins

[Anonymous]

My first train, or my Dad's? [:)] My brother and I recieved a Lionel Freight set headed by a 2026 in 1950 too! A 2026 steamer, 6462 gondola, Lehigh Valley Hopper, two dome Sunoco Tank car, and a 6257 Caboose. An oval of track and a 1033 transformer! My brother was 3 YO and I was 4 mths. I can only remember it in later years and from family photo's. The train was given away in 1957. In 1992 I was able to recreated this set ,thru train show purchases, in order to hand the memory on to my family.

[Jim Duda]

Here's mine - a MarX 333 and the original cars...still runs as good as it did in 1948 (I wore out the pick up plate on the loco and replaced it, along with a few of the "scissor" type couplers.) I run it every Christmas and suddenly, I'm 6 years old again...