How did you start?

[8ntruck]

It started for me on my 2nd Christmas in 1958 with a Lionel Texas Special freight set that my dad's uncle got me.  I don't remember getting it, I just have always had it.  It is currently on display in the KATY Depot museum. 

Over the years, I always looked forward to getting a new car at Christmas time from dad or my uncle.  It would be set up in the basement around Christmas and stay up until Febuary.  This went on through grade school, and junior high.  In high school, my interests started to swing to the swim team, bicycling , cars and girls.

When my wife and I had sons, we set the train up around the Christmas tree a few times, but the boys didn't really take much interest in it.  They soon went back into storage.

A couple of years after the Polar Express sets came out, a hobby shop opened up in our neighborhood.  Driving by it every day on the way home from work, the Polar Express set in the window started whispering to me.  I broke down and bought it 'for the future grandchildren'.  This got me back into trains.

On a lark, I typed 'Lionel' into the search box on Ebay one day and was suprised with the amount of items that were listed.  I soon discovered that just about any Lionel I ever wanted was available.  What's more, I could afford them now.  I was off and running.

Since then, my wife and I have built a 6' by 9' portable Polar Express themed layout that we put up at the museum fro time to time and a couple of local train shows.  We also put up simpler table top layouts several times a year for kids programs at the museum.  We are starting to get invited to other train shows, too. 

Layout at home?  Not at the moment.  I am planning to retire in a couple of years and move closer to one of the kids.  Not much sense in building a permenant layout right now.  But in a couple of years..........

[jwse30]

Penny Trains

Amazing what a simple scout set can do.

Becky

 

First let me say that the above quote could not be more true!

 

I got my first train set for Christmas when I was around 5 years old, about 1976. My set was Lionel's Black River Freight, and had it been made in the postwar era instead of MPC, it would have been considered a Scout set I'm sure. It had a 2-4-0 steam engine with the maracas tender, a few very cheap cars (only had operating couplers on one end, and the trucks were held on with plastic clips), and a few accessories. It came with some yard signs, a few telephone poles, part of a trestle set, and some nice cardboard items (a station, a tunnel, and a bridge).

 

I bet I put a million miles on that engine, and it still runs. The bell got broke years ago, as did the drawbar. The tender is attached with a plastic tie used to close a garbage bag  (back before they had draw strings built into them...)

 

I remember having the train set up on the kitchen floor on Christmas morning with part of the layout going under the table. I remember my Dad stepping on one of the signs barefoot and using some colorful language to describe the sign. I also remember getting a crossing gate (2162), but I didn't get to play with that because the lights didn't flash under the crossbuck, so it was packaged back up and returned as "defective".

 

In the spring, after the snow melted,  we went to Grandpa's and Grandma's and brought home a ping pong table that had been catching dust in their basement. A little bit of work, and I had a 5' x 9' layout table! I remember making roads out of black or grey construction paper, and Dad making a little shelf on the side of the table for the transformer. He had the foresight or luck to make it a little bigger so the switch controllers that came later would fit on it too.

 

Each year for the next 5 or 6 years would bring a new accessory or building and usually some more track. I had billboards, street lights, a station, an engine house, a banjo signal, a foam tunnel, bumpers, and a few switches. Most of it has survived, and what didn't has been replaced.

 

What a great thread; I hope to read quite a few more stories in the coming weeks

 

J White

 

[scrambler81]

 I had a Lionel set when I was about 10, but that really didn't go anywhere. In my mid 30s, married with no kids, I started getting into some hobbies. I was mostly into diecast cars, but I thought a train around the tree would be cool. I bought an HO set from Matchbox, but it was actually made by Mantua. I really got into it, and started gathering loads of equipment and building a layout. My first boy was born when I was 39, and following a tradition started by my Dad, my Mom gave him a Lionel set for his first Christmas. At 42, my second boy was born, and his Lionel set arrived soon after that. Couldn't fit it all, so the HO got boxed up, and I run all O now, some of it belongs to my boys, and some belongs to me.

[thesiding]

ONE DOLLAR                    That's what my mother paid for a Lionel set at an American Legion sale in 1970

 

And remember playing with it all afternoon that day.

 

Years later found out it was set 1631WS still have the tank car and the Allis Chalmers car Replaced the missing items years later

Got lots since                                                still going

Also had HO as well at the time again                   still going

[tinplatacis]

So many good stories, think I'll share mine.  My great grandfather had a set as a kid (Lionel), but couldn't find it when I was born. He wanted me to enjoy them as well, however, so he bought an MPC set from a garage sale. Got it when I was 8. After that, a fair bit of Marx, gave away at of the set. Only have the hopper now. Wish I still had the engine. It was a 8625 2-4-0, lovely little thing.

[phillyreading]

I had a Lionel Scout set in the mid 1960's with a figure 8 set up. My dad set up his pre war O guage trains near Christmas and I started running his trains as they looked better to me, the engines were a 224E & tender with three passenger cars and a 249E & tender with two freight cars and a caboose. I liked the O gauge trains better because they had switches with the track. You could say I was hooked on O gauge for a couple of years and then I got my first large transformer, a used ZW, so now I could run all my trains at one time even my 027 train.

Today I have several transformers; a pw ZW & Z, a KW, 2 MTH Z-1000's, even kept some smaller Lionel single train transformers and use them for lights.

[JamesP]

Here is a picture of myself as a little shaver, opening my first train set.  It is a Marx #526 set with the 401 windup locomotive... I still have the set, although it is a lot worse for wear!  I still run it around my clockwork layout once in a while...

 - James

[Penny Trains]

My half-sister bought our dad a basic Lionel scout type starter set from J.C. Penney's sometime between 1965 and 1969.  (Box had 65 catalog but that doesn't prove much)  So it was there every Christmas for me and my brother and was "New" every year till I was 3 or 4.  It was just a 2-4-2 with smoke, small streamlined tender, Frisco boxcar with non-opening doors, green gondola with 2 containers, flatcar with two cable reels and a red M & St.L SP type caboose with no light, ladders or battery boxes.

Amazing what a simple scout set can do.

Becky

[KRM]

Well for my older brother and me it was therapy. When I was five our mom came down with overran cancer. When she passed a year later + or -  (first of Jan or so 1959) dad was stuck with the two of us, 6 and 8 year old boys. So he got the idea to build a small layout in the basement of our aunt’s house to give us a diversion. It worked, I still and will always thank him for that diversion, it is hard for others to get but it worked for us. Dad was broke and did what he could in the swamp of bills but found a way to get me a 1957 Lionel 4 Cars & Diesel Engine. Freight Set  # 1569 with the 202 ALCO UP engine, but that was not till Christmas of1960.
Nuf said,,,,,
  I do like that picture Buckeye!   

 Update: 11-17-15

I knew I had these pictures someplace. This is the layout our dad made for us in my Aunt’s basement. These were taken about a month after mom passed. Late Jan of 1959.
I am the guy in the front and that is my brother in the back.

A better shot of the layout.

[Roger Carp]

Hi Buckeye Riveter,

Please contact me about the picture of you as a boy with your Marx train. Maybe we can do a short article for Classic Toy Trains.

 

Thanks,

 

Roger Carp

Senior Editor

262-796-8776 ext. 253

[Waynestrains]

For me it all started with a Marx windup train for Christmas as a kid. The next year it was a Marx Santa Fe electric train set. the next year a 1130 Lionel set. My first layout when I was between 13 and 14, complete with scenery, buildings, and accessories. Years later I sold all my trains to buy HO and build a number of layouts. In the 1990s I began buying and collecting O trains including the ones I had as a kid. At this time I have an HO, N, and O layouts though I more and more lean to O. Wayne

[mackb4]

 It was fall of 1974 and I was snooping in the attic of my parents house and found a box full of Marx trains..." Ooooooohhhhhhh wow " I said to myself,and the rest was history.

 I got my first train set that Christmas and was blessed to have shared my love of the hobby with my late father (d.2008) for what's now been over 40 years .

 I still have that first set and my dads first Lionel set proudly displayed in a display case in my house.

 There were times during high school that I shared my intrest with other hobbies such as getting introduced to Atari,drag racing and girls .Still have all of them too..well except the girls ,I've had the same wife for 24 years now.

 

[tinplatacis]

Is that a 490, buckeye?

[Buckeye Riveter]

This Marx Train is where it started and the it has been with me for 60 years. It still runs real good, too.  

 

[LL675]

Dad sometimes set up his Lionels under the tree. He mainly ran his UP 2023s, and SF 623 switcher. Ocasionaly he ran his 1684 and 6110. But every year when we went to my Grandparents, my Uncle Jim had his 2020 Turbine runing. That locomotive, with the red Keystone sealed my fate. He also would run the Marx CV that Dad had passed onto him. I lost my Uncle suddenly this past May. Now his trains will be mine, and the memories are flooding back.

[Billwiz]

Basically post war 027, the UP diesel and the 2026 steam. Marx Commodore Vanderbilt, and a Lionel Scout loco. I also received a pre war American Flyer O set from a retired pastor my wife worked with. All but the Scout still run.

[Tom47]

Started in 1955 with American Flyer train set for Christmas. I have the orginal set along what I have accumulated through the years.

[tinplatacis]

Nice Bill. What did he run?

[Billwiz]

My dad would set up his Lionel and Marx trains for Christmas.  My uncle set up his American Flyers.  That led to my first HO set, and now I have Dad's trains, HO, N and even a G scale.  Unfortunately, not enough space, time or money to build all, but currently working on the O  and HO layouts.

 

[tinplatacis]

So whenall did people start here? What trains did you have when you started? What got you started in the hobby? I'm kinda curious to see what people say, both younger collectors/hobbyists and the older generations.