I got started with a wind up Marx set, that was a figure 8. That was at age 4. By 5 I had an electric Marx set that had only a circle of track, but I was very disappointed, as the track had 3 rails, and the real trains had 2. For Christmas when I was 6, I got an American Flyer dual train set. One diesel, PA-1 and a 4-4-2 steamer. There were lots of cars and other accessories. I was very happy as I could fill the entire living room with track and run trains to my hearts content. You could say that I loved them to death, as within a year and a half they were dead, completely worn out. AF was hard to find in a small town, and at age 8 my Dad took my over to Pratville, Alabama where there was a real model RR shop. There I discovered HO. My Dad let me buy a kit. Now I had also been building plastic models of airplanes, cars, tanks etc, since I was 5, and the Athearn BB kits just looked too simple, so I got a Silver Streak Dbl door auto box, lettered for the Southern, my favorite road, that ran through our home town. I used elmers glue to put it together and had to wait another weeks for a set of trucks. I used the dummy couplers that were in the kit for the time being. I painted the roof and ends with the closest colors I had in my paint box, and for almost a year I displayed it and other kits I acquired until the Christmas when I was nine, when I got a Varney train set. I got other things as well, extra horn hook couplers so the kits I built could run in the train, and a 4-4-2, extra car kits, trucks turnouts etc. I was off and running and have been doing so ever since. I'm now going to be 61 this year, and I still have that first kit. Don't really remember what happened to the other kits I had from that time, but I did keep my first one.
While I did intersperse my trains with other "hobbies", like building all of the Revell 1/96 sailing ships, trains remained my primary hobby, as it is today. I learned a lot over those years and I do try to help with teaching what I know by distributing that knowledge as best I can when asked.