General Discussion (Model Railroader)

 Back in 1962 when I was five, I got my first train set for Christmas. It was a "Lone Star Treble O Electric Train" that is about the same size as N scale.

Dad and I started my railroad empire on a sheet of plywood in my bedroom. It was there through my entire childhood until I was a teenager.  Those little engines logged so many hours I still can't believe they ran this long.

Dad would often come home from work and say "look what I picked up for us at the Bay today" (The Hudson Bay company is a big department store in Canada)  He would go there on his lunch hour. After a while we built up quite a layout with a fair amount of rolling stock, buildings, track and switches.

I can't remember when I took it down, but I do remember doing it and taking great care pulling up the track nails and screws. I rapped up all the cars and buildings and track in tissue and put it all away for its long sleep.

Warp ahead to 2005. I am playing with my seven year old (at that time) son on "our" 5'x10' wooden Thomas the Tank Engine layout. As I was dispatching another battery operated train and he was throwing switches around the layout he asked if I had a Thomas when I was a kid? I said " I had an electric train when I was a kid. He asked "what happened to it"?  When I told him it was down in the crawl space his eyes went as big as saucers.

In a few minutes I was back from the land down under and had gone through decontamination and had "the box in hand"  We carefully unpacked everything in the box and set up a bit of track on the kitchen table. No luck. The rubber bands on the drive had disintegrated.

As luck would have I was going to the dentist the very next day and they gave me two bags of orthobands in all different sizes. I came home and installed four new bands in each engine. On the track they went. I slowly cranked up the power and off it went. As it went by me, it looked up at me and said "where the "H" have you been for the last forty years?

Off the table went Thomas and a 5'x10' Lone Star Treble O electric train took over where Thomas once ran . My son spent hours running that old train, but age was taking its toll. Drastic action was required.

While my wife was out shopping, the guys came in and we had the grand piano, amps and guitars out of the music room and into the living room by the time she got home. As of today my son and I are playing with our 15'x24' layout in the "trainroom" That bug sure returned with a vengeance.

Oh ya. My question was. Do you still have your  childhood train set?

                                                                       Brent

40 years.  That's how long my trains sat in boxes, stored in crawl spaces, closets and attics, moved from home to apartment to apartment, and finally to a new attic for most of those long years.  To the best of my knowledge, these are the cars and the engine that made up that first Athearn freight:

I'd like to say "It's pulled by an old rubber-band drive GP-9," but in reality, that engine can't pull anything anymore.  I have a pair of new Proto Geeps instead, and I gutted that engine and made it into a dummy.  I gave it a tryout, though, but it didn't run well enough to justify the decoder I'd installed, and a new motor and trucks would have cost more than the new engines.

The Burlington ice-bunker reefer and the bulkhead flat are in a train on my main line right now, though.

Yes, and no. I never had a childhood train set. My father set up a very nice HO layout for Chirstmas every year. As soon as we had the space it was put up in the basement and left up. By age 12 it was my model railroad.

And, 40 years later I do still have some of its elements on my layout.

Sheldon

 Yes...somewhere I still have pieces of my first Lionel HO set, a Chessie GP9, with one power truck and a Chessie Santa Fe style steel caboose.

 I also have, safely tucked away, the 1955 Lionel O set my dad started with.

Nick

Yeah, you could say I still have my original train set. My parents gave me this train for Christmas, circa 1975 I'd reckon.  It logged many many miles on the basement carpet. The Athearn SD9 doesn't get much rail time any more, but the rest remains in regular service.

Yes, a 1947 American Flyer set my father purchased at his Navy exchange for $14 when I was 6 months old.  It's the reason I model in S Scale to this day, though I have long since moved from tinplate to scale modeling.  The cars from that set, converted to scale with new couplers and wheelsets, etc., still run on my layout.

 I still have my old train set stuff. I used to run it on the floor, then eventually on my train table. Im pretty sure the engine (a Santa Fe GP 35) still works...complete with horn hooks and all! As for the rolling stock I eventually converted them to Kadees. I practiced weathering on them and used them for years. Now they are pretty much retired as they dont meet my standards anymore.

 Oh, yes.

Christmas, 1974.  I was all of four years old, and Santa Claus brought me a Lionel "Cannonball" train set, plus a couple of extra cars.  I still have it, though age has taken its toll...one of the side rods is broken, and one of the cars became brittle and shattered.  But that is one train that I will probably never get rid of.

Come to think of it, I still have the engine and caboose from my first HO train set too...the Tyco "Golden Eagle".

 Well, my wife seems to think I still have 'it" 

But I never had a childhood train set, despite what my wife thinks.  But I still do have a couple of pieces of my first train stuff: a B&O short covered hopper of some sort (grey, with black roof and lettering) and a RS11 (Life Like I think?) that I started to make into a RS18.  But it will sit in the scrap line as an example of what not to do

 Brent -

 My first "electric train set" was a Lionel "O" gauge starter set, about the same time time frame as you (early 60's). I gave most of it to a cousin years later - think he destroyed it ....

Fast forward late to the 60's - go my first "N" gauge set, an Atlas E8 PRR oval layout. Still have the pieces from that set, although the E8 got a new can motor earlier this year and I still run it from time to time.

 Still have boxes of HO stuff stored safely away - but after getting more into "N" doubt I'll go back. Funny how big the HO stuff looks now.

 LOL, things sure have changed over the decades, happy to say I haven't , but the WS stuff we have today sure beats the dyed sawdust we used to use !!!

 Archer

Like many growing up in the late 40's early 50's never had a train set though we did go to Sears Roebuck and watch the marvelous displays every Xmas.

So I was a grown man before I was really bit by the model railroading bug and do still have my first engine a Rivarossi 2-8-2 abet with a slightly different tender (brass) and one day she will again see the high Iron.

I've still got a couple of cars from my Christmas 1969 Tyco set.

One, a 40' tank car, was the subject of a rebuild that started in 2006 and was finished up this summer.

Nice to have it still be around after 40 years!

No, those are long gone, all three of them. My first one was a second hand Lionel that we never did get to run but I was young enough to have fun pulling it around the track. A few years later for Christmas I got an American Flyer over-and-under figure 8 set that we ran the heck out of until it finally expired. A few years after that, my brother and I bought a used 4x8 HO layout that we had a lot of fun with for a few years before we became teenagers and found there were more interesting things to do.

Fast forward a dozen or so years to the late 1970s and I got the bug back and bought a starter set. A Model Power with a circle of track, a cheap power pack, a switch engine, three freight cars, and a caboose. A real piece of junk. Later on I learned about the differences in quality and became a more discerning buyer, but I still hung onto that loco and the freight cars.

Depending on how you define first train set (sort of in reverse order) --

My Dad also bought a LoneStar OOO about 1963.  It was his for use as a display, but once a year "I" would bring it to show and tell, and for the rest of the day us boys would wait for lunch / recess so we could run the train.  After 3 moves by my parents, all after I had left, and 2 years of off and on searching thru Dad's kit boxes, I finally found the correct Atheran box it had been stored in -- the worng end was facing out.  I too went to the ortho for bands, and after a good lube and cleaning it was up and running last Christmas.

Prior to that, my brother and I had our own double track loop in the basement.  I had the Athearn Santa Fe Passenger, and he the Q GP7 & freight.  Prior to the table, the ATSF ran around the Christmas Tree. Later a Hustler was added.  All rubberband drive.  I thinik he has most of the rolling stock, but I ended up with the snap-track.

In the beginning, before I was, Dad was already working on his layout, with us 2 boys later 'helping'.  The layout never progressed much, but the equipment did, and we were allowed to run at the East Bay Club during work sessions.  Now I get to run and remember a lot of that equipment, combined with the scores of cars I bought during my youth.

Phil

 I still have what I'm 99% sure was my first bunch of model trains. I never had a set, per se, but my mom bought me a bunch of used stuff at my LHS. An oval of steel track, a Tyco Chessie engine, 2 Chessie boxcars (I really liked the cat logo), and a Life-Like station kit. I think I got most of this between 1994 and 1996.