Childhood trains


Did you have a Lionel train set as a kid?

  • Yes

    Votes: 19 43.2%

  • No

    Votes: 25 56.8%
  • Total voters
    44
Lionel fan

Lionel fan

Enthusiast
So, I'm curious to know how many people here grew up with a Lionel O gauge train set that many have instilled a love of trains in you. I grew up with Lionel, and I still love the trains (granted I'm only 15).
 
My first set was from my uncle at age 14. He took it the engine apart when he was a kid and told me if i could put it together i could have it. It was a pre-war set. I put it together and it worked. This was around 1959.

Bob
 
I had a Lionel 027 set with cast iron 0-4-0 engine as a Christmas gift in 1956. I think it had a gondola, crane and a work caboose along with a loop of track with an auto uncoupler section and a transformer.
 
My dad's Lionel equipment was given to my oldest cousin before I came along. He played with it outside in the dirt and ruined everything before I had the opportunity to play with it. I ended up with Tycho and Bachmann sets for Christmas when I was 4 or 5 years old.
 
Lionel was a dream for me, but it was Ertl Thomas the Tank Engine toys and all brands of wooden railway (Brio-type) that got me building my first railroads. One day, I started building basic scenry around my brio on the floor, so on my next birthday I got a Bachmann HO train set. Now I do HO, O gauge, and a little S and N on the side.

And once in awhile, I still haul out the 2 bins of wooden railway for other kids to play with. :D
 
I was born into a household where my older brother had the classic Lionel F units in Santa Fe warbonnet of course. At a very young age I got a steamer to run along on the layout. (I was disappointed at the time!) Then I saw HO scale plasticville and found I could build a city but mom said was the wrong size (scale) So that Christmas I asked for an Ho train (out went the Lionel) and I started over with a Varney 0-4-0 Tank engine and built that into a small empire until my first year of High School.
 
No Linoel. Started with American Flyer S-scale. IIRC, had Santa Fe PA & PB(?) and a K-5 Pacific. But I wanted to model the CB&Q, which used EMD diesels. When Einhorn came out with a "Q" F7 with a DC motor, I cobbled together the necessary electrical for the DC. Then, when I was about 12 or 13, I switched to HO. When I started high school, my folks asked me if I really wanted to keep the S-scale stuff, or could we give it to a local children's hospital. I said yes. Wish I had kept the stuff. Be worth something today.

Been in HO off and on for years (now approaching 70!). Working on my third (and maybe last) layout. With over 50 locomotives, steam & diesel, I've got only a few with DCC and sound. Most just run on straight DC, using a MRC Tech 6, 6.0, with a MRC Tech 4 260 for DC, just to avoid confusion and burning out DC motors with AC.
 
I got an American Flyer for Christmas when I was seven. I was adamant about not wanting Lionel because of the track. Three rails with three ties...............what were they thinking!! So I got a 4-4-0 AF, well, at least it had more ties than rails.:p

That lasted awhile, then I bought an N scale train set at age 14 and that has been my scale that I've used ever since. Well, there was a very brief try out of some Bachman HO in my mid twenties. One name says it all.
 
Not me, it seams when I was a child Lionel was in a period where it had fallen out of favor (mid 80s-90s), at least in my neck of the woods.

However, my dad and his two brothers all shared an American Flyer collection and it was a natural right of passing for my dad to get me a train-set of my own and so the torch of Model Railroading was passed... 3 decades later and that old American Flyer collection is now safely in my hands, having been "rescued" from my extended family who don't appreciate or recognize the value in having "that old train set" around!
 
No lionel here, But I do have my very first locomotive and it means the world to me, rumor has it when my mom was in labor my dad was at home lettering this athearn sw-7 with my initials and numbered the year I was born It is currently waiting for my disply case to arrive and thats first piece goin in it

I love you dad, but you have created a monster

100_2173.jpg


I had other cheap trains model power/ tyco and cheap life like when I was tem he bought me a then new atlas rs-1 with the kato drive. that is still the smoothest engine i've ever owned
 
No Lionel. Marx wind up at 3, Marx 0-27 at 5. Didn't like it, it had 3 rails and wasn't anything like what ran a block from our house. Go an AF set with 3 engines at 6, and in that time loved it to death. At 8 discovered HO, and have been there ever since. I even still have the first craftsman kit I ever built.

A Silver Streak Southern 40 foot automobile car. Wood and cast metal detail parts. cost then 2.98
 
I had a Lionel O(n3, -27?? not sure) It had the 3-rail track, with an AC pwr supply. Sure wish I still had it.. it was a "hand-me-down" from some older cousins. They were 8 yrs older then me, I got it in the 60's so it would have been a 50's era set. A steam loco, tender, box car, gondola, missle car(stop on an electromagnet and launch the missle) and a caboose. Also had a couple of turnouts.

Went looking for it years later.. Mom claims she gave it back to my cousins but I think it either went to the church or the big yellow packer truck that came once a week. <sigh> Oh well, the way it goes.
 
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