Finally got a little switcher loco, and a crappy dc powerpack (for the next couple weeks), and powered up a small section of track. The one thing I missed the most about trains, was believe it or not, that electrical smell..... Man.... Does that ever bring back memories.... Sorry I had to share this!
alexP
the electrical smell or the grease and oil used? I know when I fired up my Dad's American Flyer Trains there was nothing like the smell of American Flyer smoke that would bring back the memories!
Alex
HA! Suddenly theres a whole new area of railroading to be discovered.....
Dave
Just be glad you don't have to press "2" for English.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zQ_ALEdDUB8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hqFS1GZL4s
http://s73.photobucket.com/user/steemtrayn/media/MovingcoalontheDCM.mp4.html?sort=3&o=27
steemtrayn wrote:Remember when your parents told you to quit running the trains because it was messing up the TV picture?
No doubt!! This brings back memories of my smoking Lionel around the Xmas tree when I was 5 years old. That ozone and smoke smell....
For me, the "throwback moment" was when I installed a bright LED headlight in a locomotive, and then ran it around the layout at night. I only had a few old structures scattered around, and no real scenery yet. What struck me was the moving shadow patterns on the walls of the room. First, as the train came around the far end of the layout, the image of the building would appear small. As the train approached, the shadow would grow larger and larger, and then curve off to the side as the engine passed.
A long-dormant boyhood memory came back.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
Guilford Guy wrote:Your positive that AF smoke didn't take you on a magical train trip, where the tie-die skies only seemed to be memories?
LOL, didn't know lamp oil could do that to a person, could be the reason I dumped HO and return to S....
Oddly enough the trains never affected the TV... only the AFX slot cars, maybe thats why I liked trains over slot cars....
Niagara Railroader wrote: Finally got a little switcher loco, and a crappy dc powerpack (for the next couple weeks), and powered up a small section of track. The one thing I missed the most about trains, was believe it or not, that electrical smell..... Man.... Does that ever bring back memories.... Sorry I had to share this! alexP
Ditto!!! I first remember that smell from our little 4x8 from early in the 1960s. Everytime I smell that, it brings back my earliest memories of HO.
MisterBeasley wrote: For me, the "throwback moment" was when I installed a bright LED headlight in a locomotive, and then ran it around the layout at night. I only had a few old structures scattered around, and no real scenery yet. What struck me was the moving shadow patterns on the walls of the room. First, as the train came around the far end of the layout, the image of the building would appear small. As the train approached, the shadow would grow larger and larger, and then curve off to the side as the engine passed.A long-dormant boyhood memory came back.
I had a similar experience, but it was when the train went under or through a truss bridge. made ya wanna duck.
Ah yes, the smell of ozone as you ran your Lionel/Marx/American Flyer toy trains; what a memory trigger! I started out with my brother's old prewar Lionel on a 4x8 (wish I had it now: the last time I looked it up in Greenburg's, the loco alone was worth $800!), then graduated to Flyer for Christmas, 1954. One of my favorite things was to get the train running, switch off the room lights, then lie on the floor with my face at the end of a straight, so the headlight came right at me, the only way to enjoy the feeling of danger without risking life and limb (I knew better than to go anywhere near the main line of the real thing!).
My Flyer "Silver Bullet" train was equipped with a smoke unit, and I was just thinking about it the other day: what I wouldn't give to smell that American Flyer smoke today! The smoke fluid came in little plastic capsules with tadpole tails so you could drip it down through a tiny aluminum funnel into the smoke unit pipe, which was red plastic. The red plastic caught the back glow of the headlight and made "Realistic red, glowing smoke, just like the real thing." (Actually, I don't remember the exhaust of the real thing glowing red, but in a kid's imagination, even those gaudily painted Lionel trains of the '20s and '30s looked as realistic as any scale model, right?) A whiff of that smoke fluid would take me instantly back to the years when I was starting to think of "Model Railroads" instead of "Electric Trains!"