Thanks all!
Interesting to hear the Tyco/Lifelike stories.
When I was a very little kid, my older brother had HO trains, and he had yellow-box-era Athearns and Tyco, back when Tyco was RTR Mantua. These cars made such an impression on me as a kid. I especially loved the sprung trucks on the Athearn cars.
By the time I was a little older and buying trains, the readily available stuff was all glossy plastic Tyco and Lifelike. You had to go to higher-end hobby shops to find stuff along the lines of Athearn, but we either didn't have those stores near us, or I didn't know about them.
I would always look for Tyco and Lifelike cars that still retained some of the older characteristics - you could occasionally find things - but most of what I would come across was billboard cars with cheap glossy plastic.
Many decades later, when I got back into trains as an adult, I started shopping online for the older Athearn and Mantua/Tyco cars. I was happy that so many were still available and in good condition, sometimes unassembled in the box.
But while I would occasionally get an engine of another railroad, I pretty much have stuck with PRR and B&O, the trains my older brother had.
I started in the hobby with a Lionel train set for Christmas 1976, and then a couple years later I got a Tyco Silver Streak train set. While I still had the Lionel, the HO stuff initially was "anything goes". About 10 years later, I started focusing phasing out the toy train stuff and focusing more on the realistic scale models, many of which are still running on my current layout. When I got into the 1990s, I started focusing more on a "specific" time range (mid-70s to mid-90s), which is what I've been sticking with since.
Kevin
http://chatanuga.org/RailPage.html
http://chatanuga.org/WLMR.html
My first set was a Life-Like that had an HO Santa Fe F-7 pulling a fantasy boxcar, cities service tank, yellow Katy livestock car, and caboose. I model the New York Central in HO today. In between I acquired Pennsylvania, B&O, and another AT&SF locomotives. I dabbled in N scale for a time as well, with Chessie System & Rock Island locomotives. It was completely by chance I ended up with New York Central. I had saved enough money for my first quality locomotive (an Athearn Bluebox) and my Mom took me to my first ever real hobby shop. I fell in love with a Soo Line engine, but didn't have enough money. I did, however have enough for a New York Central SDP-40. After flirting with various other eras and railroads, I finally settled on a 1940's themed layout. No idea what railroad I wanted. Started researching the history of lines for equipment I already had and that is what did it for me. Learning about the elegance of the 20th Century Limited and the rivalry with the Pennsylvania hooked me. If it wasn't for the Central, I probably would have ended up either a Pennsy, Santa Fe, or C&O modeler.
Mike
As a young boy, I had Lionels, and realized that as I got a bit older I got kind of tired of the toy train part of the hobby and wanted greater realism. I also realized that HO offered more for me than O scale.
My teenage layout was Milwaukee in HO, chosen because I liked the colors and I instantly liked the looks of the GP9 locomotives that we didn't have where I was growing up in suburban New York.
Now I am 74, and I've been back in the hobby for about 15 years. I still have all of my very old rolling stock and I run a couple of the old engines around as dummies, or "honorary" engines. And, I still run Milwaukee geeps. Sorry, no rocket launchers, exploding boxcars or cattle cars with the cows that paraded around on little rubber feet on a vibrating platform. But, y'know, I still have one of those yellow MKT stock cars from Athearn that I got with my first HO train set.
It takes an iron man to play with a toy iron horse.
My first rail toy was one of those simple plastic shells with a couple of cars. It was a diesel...pretty sure. I was maybe four at the time. The two or three cars were green, yellow, red, and the diesel was blue? 66 years ago now.
At age 12 we got a simple Marklin train set in HO. It was fun. The middle-aged next door colleague of my dad's built a plywood slab with a steep ramp up and over a hill...a large knob, really. His own basement was a huge O Gauge layout.
I did nothing train related over the next fifty years. I had just retired and was looking for a hobby. Hadn't thought of trains until my eyes rested on an advert in the local paper. Next day, I had my first locomotive and some EZ-Track. That got the fire lit, but the boiler wasn't going to get hot until I furnished it with some learning and figuring. That came over the next six months.
So, my story is disjointed, and I don't see a linear development.
...or were they a jumping off point for other railroads and other eras?
I had PRR and B&O as a kid, and I have stuck with these ever since.
There are some cars from my childhood that I absolutely adore, for example, the Athearn Minneapolis St. Louis boxcar, modeled in a color someplace between salmon and melon, that no other company has replicated, that I've seen. (No idea i the color is prototypically accurate or not.). Also love the yellow MKT livestock car from Athearn.
I am also obsessed with F units and USRA 0-6-0s with the sloped tender.