If you are a Baby Boomer and male child, trains and Christmas go hand in hand. When a kid, all my trains came as gifts at Christmas. There were many Christmases that involved trains; but, some Christmases, my memories of trains where not of trains that I got for Christmas; but, a huge layout that was owned by my best friend’s father and were only set up at Christmas. It was a Lionel set with tons of track, an outside loop upon which ran a War Bonneted Santa Fe F A & B units, pulling a 4 to 5 passenger car train. The inner loop had a loop of track and an inner figure 8 with turnout at the bottom so you could switch from one to the other. This loop had a steam powered freight train and 10 or so freight cars, some of the fright cars were operating, like milk cans that could be loaded and un-loaded and coal that could be dropped from one hopper, go up a conveyor and be loaded into anther hopper. There was also what we called a bumper car that ran back and forth between bumpers and reversed direction every time it hit a bumper.
This train set was placed upon the neighbor’s Ping Pong table and when set up covered every square inch of the table. My buddy and I spent days running these trains and I don’t remember getting tired of doing it. This railroad was set-up every winter that my friend lived in the house next door.
The above are some of my fondest memories of Christmas.
What are yours?
NP 2626 "Northern Pacific, really terrific"
Northern Pacific Railway Historical Association: http://www.nprha.org/
Similar to yours.
I got an American Flyer 4-6-2 (PRR) and an oval of track at age 7 for Christmas.
Later, my parents got a pair of switches and some more track so that I could set up an inner track.
Still later, at my urging, my parents bought me a Baldwin switcher (C&NW) and even more track.
Great fun, great times. I still have all of that stuff all of these years later.
Rich
Alton Junction
I have told my story on here before, but will happily repeat it here.
From age 5 to age about age 10, my parents would clear out most of the living room furniture on Thanksgiving day to set up the Christmas Garden.
It was a 18' x 5' HO layout complete with Tru-Scale milled roadbed track, Aristo trolley bus, two mainline loops, lighted buildings, powered turnouts, dual power pack, hidden staging for addtional trains and more.
Around age 10, we moved into a house with a basement, where my parents planned to stay for a long while. So that year my father put the layout up in the basement, this time with plaster mountains, elevated track, and all the other previously mentioned features.......
It never came down after Christmas and quickly the reigns of ownship were handed to me - my start in model railroading.
Many of the structures on the layout were craftsman kits of the time that both my parents built. The trains were a mix of Varney, Athearn, Mantua and similar kits.
A fair percentage of the elements of that layout are still on my layout today. Some others gave way to the learning curve of a young modeler.
By age 14 I was working in the local hobby shop selling trains and doing repairs, and was a member of the Severna Park Model Railroad Club.
As a side note, I never had an O guage train as a child, I did buy my own son O guage at about age 5 - and he had a permenant layout in his bedroom from age 5 to age 11 - on the lower level of a set of bunk beds.
So my childhood was filled with model trains from early on - all happy memories and still lots of fun now.
A side note about the fun - Several times in my life, I allowed the hobby to draw me into taking it too seriously in several ways - one was detail/accuracy - you know counting rivets. The other was getting too invloved with the social side and being too caught up in what others were doing.
In both cases I found this killed my interest for a while - until I backed up and remembered what I like to do with model trains.
Happy holidays to all,
Sheldon
I was probably around 10 years old when my father built 2 4' X 4' sections that were bolted togther and laid on the floor in my bed room. After I showed so much interest a 2' X 4' was added but that eliminated using a clothes closet. They were brought down from the attic after Thanksgiving and were put away by mid January.
I started with the Lionel trains that my older brother had lost interest in. but every Christmas Dad and I would go to the local harware store and Dad could tell what I wanted for Christmas.
The layout and train roster was added to every year. It had a log loader and a crane with an electic magnet to load and unload cars. There was also a gateman.
When I got married and had a son I brought everything to my house and when my son was train ready I got them out of storage again. We added another section or two. We went to Graet Greenberg Train Shows and always left with a lot of goodies. After all I was a kid again.
When I got back into trains in 2007 I still had the sections of my childhood layout as well as the trains, but after considerable thought I decided to go with HO.
Picture are the sections.
Merry Christmas to all.
Bob
Don't Ever Give Up
Got my first Lionel train at Christmas 1976 when I was two years old. Over the next couple years, I got three more cars for it, and then in 2003, I purchased another locomotive and 8 more freight cars from my late great uncle's estate, shortly after getting a matching caboose off Ebay.
http://chatanuga.org/Lionel.html
Here's a Christmas video I made with this year's tree up. With the new track that I got earlier this year, the loop now nicely comes across in front of the tree and presents. :)
watch?v=icM1OQ1NtVc
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
I remember the MMP & R Railroad that my Dad set up every Christmas starting in 1956 until we outgrew them in our teens. MMP & R are our initials. Lionel O-27. We had three loops, one inside the other, with separate transformers and the ability to cross over from one loop to the other with automatic and manual switches. Two or three dead end sidings. My avatar is my locomotive with 4 freight cars. My brother had a New Haven electric and two passenger cars. Later my little sister had a U.S. Navy switcher. We had the rotating beacon, the semaphore signal, the crossing gate, whistle station, track cleaning care, working crane and caboose, coal dump car, milk car, among others. Plasticville village. Plus special buildings and scenery my dad made out of cardboard.
richhotrain Similar to yours. I got an American Flyer 4-6-2 (PRR) and an oval of track at age 7 for Christmas. Later, my parents got a pair of switches and some more track so that I could set up an inner track. Still later, at my urging, my parents bought me a Baldwin switcher (C&NW) and even more track. Great fun, great times. I still have all of that stuff all of these years later. Rich
When I was 6 (I think) my brother and I got a Gilbert America Flyer set for Christmas. It had a Pennsy 4-6-2 K-4 Pacific in the set along with 6-8 freight cars. I have loved the K-4 since that time, there was just somthing about that loco that really appealed to me. Much later, when the Bachmann Spectrum Pennsy K-4 Pacific came out, I just had to have one. I found it to be a very good runner and gave me no trouble the whole time I owned it. It didn't really fit my Northern Pacific layout and I eventually sold it on Ebay.
When I was about 10, the neighbors had a garage sale one summer, and had a bunch of old Lionel trains and rusty track for sale in a big box under the table. I begged my father to buy them, but in hind sight the track WAS pretty rusty.He said "maybe for Christmas"...
By the time Christmas rolled around, though, I had forgotten about the trains.
But there, under, well, NEXT to the tree was a Brand New Marx 027 loop with a steamer, flat car with search light, box car, caboose and a few other cars that escape my faltering memory now. ANd some signs, a couple of cars {for the car rack car}, a water tower, and 12 telephone poles all around a loop of track!
I was in heaven. That loop morphed into new track on a 4x8 to play wiht, a diesel switcher set came for the following Easter, and the layout became 2 4x8s in a "L" shape with a plan out of 101 track plans for a 3 interchange looper RR.
FOr a 3rd loco, My brother got a {used} F series diesel for the following Christmas.
The idea was it was a father/son deal where we could all run a train on our own loop, or trade loops {if careful!}. MY father cut out,and we helped build 3 houses.3 transformers, one for each for each loop controlled the layout. Two transformers came with the 2 sets, and one came from the BIG ERECTOR set {'memba them?} my fahter had as a kid to control "erected stuff" from the set.
Ah, those were the momeries. Cereal cardoboard boxes became my building material of choice to build structures, if I didn't have balsa wood on hand. At one time, one of the cereal manufactures HAD O-ish scale 'structures' of a western town theme structure printed on the back of the box, and you just cut the bottom off in the shape of the roof line of the drawn building! Those were used in the far back for "back drop buildings"
The layout board was painted green, and roads were painted in black base.
To build mountains, was papier Mache over paper balls, covered in paint and sifted sand from the old sand box glued down for "earth". Plastic trees rounded out the scenery.
Thank you for this stroll down amnesia lane....
-G .
Just my thoughts, ideas, opinions and experiences. Others may vary.
HO and N Scale.
After long and careful thought, they have convinced me. I have come to the conclusion that they are right. The aliens did it.
I can just barely remember a Christmas when very young, of my brother having a stamped metal O-27 train set going around the Christmas Tree. It may have been a Marx set. This would have probably been around 1952-1954; or, so. Beyond this one time of seeing this train set, I may have seen my brother play with this set one other time. These would be my earliest memories of model/toy trains. However, this set around the Christmas Tree is the only time we ever had a train set going around our tree, and this is an aspect of Christmas which has become so engrained in the holidays, today!
7:42 Christmas Eve.
I was probably 10 years old, so this would have been 1960, when I got my HO trainset. I had been driving Mom & Dad nuts for weeks previous to Christmas pestering them about an HO train set. It was a Tyco set with track enough for an oval and one of the straight tracks was a re-railer. The loco was a Tyco 0-4-0 saddle tank (Booster?) decked out in Pennsylvania livery and the set had one MKT “The KATY” 40 foot yellow Box Car, one Tuscan Pennsylvania Gondola and a red Pennsylvania Bobber caboose. Along with this trainset was a Varney NYC Stock Car, a Varney Power Pack and a Varney 0-4-0 “Little Joe Dock-Sider” that my Mom had bought from a neighbor kid, who was obviously done with model trains. Although this is now 54 years ago, I can remember seeing the trainset under the tree on Christmas Morning, like it was almost yesterday! I still have the Varney Little Joe and it still runs and can out pull anything I have today, for its size.
Merry Christmas to everyone!
NP2626 I can just barely remember a Christmas when very young, of my brother having a stamped metal O-27 train set going around the Christmas Tree. It may have been a Marx set. This would have probably been around 1952-1954; or, so. Beyond this one time of seeing this train set, I may have seen my brother play with this set one other time. These would be my earliest memories of model/toy trains. However, this set around the Christmas Tree is the only time we ever had a train set going around our tree, and this is an aspect of Christmas which has become so engrained in the holidays, today!
I had a wind-up Marx stamped set that only went in a loop on a round 2 rail track..we used it as a static "back up loco" {it was the only part that was plastic, the loco} on the big 4x8x 4x8 layout.It was never placed around the tree, it was for 3-6 year old me to "wear out"/....
When very young, (6) I think, I was given the classic Marx wind up, two rail set with stamped metal cars. The local kids and I would play with it in the dirt outside under the shade of a large maple tree in our yard. When I was 12 in 1958, for Christmas, I was given a formal Varney HO gauge set with the classic "Little Joe" dockside as the loco.
Over the next year I took a subscription to MR and bought more track and varney cars from money earned mowing lawns and repairing neighborhood radios and TVs. I built my first table layout in late 58 and never lost my love of model railroading, even though there were dry spells (college, Vietnam, early career).....I always came back. Each time I did return, it was like that first fun with the old Marx windups all over again.
Richard
If I can't fix it, I can fix it so it can't be fixed