As Mark (the OP) knows, I grew up a couple of blocks away from him in Brooklyn… in 1969, as he was exiting Brooklyn Prep, I was entering 
Both my older brother’s original Lionel set and mine were from the waning days of the post war era (his was around 1960, mine ‘62 or ‘63). I sill have both, and they’re in pretty good shape for 60 years of age - unlike their owners!!! Both were purchased from a neighborhood toy store called Thrift Town on Nostrand Ave. Since we always lived in apartments in those days, our “layout” was a 4x8 sheet of plywood with two concentric loops of track - my Super O was the larger loop. While I never lost interest in the trains, life tended to be somewhat busy in those days, so the did take a bit of a back seat for my HS days. But there was a reawakening during my college days since I went to school out of state for two years and road Northeast Corridor trains a number of times, including a couple of trips on the Amtrak Turbo Train. Then I found an MPC Pennsy engine in a local department store which looked like one of the engines I saw in my train travels and the decent down the slippery slope began 
When I returned to Brooklyn, my family had moved to the Midwood area near Ave. M… while I was finishing college, Train World opened next to the Ave. M subway station, so I had to pass it every time I took the subway!!! While I only had a Carpet Central for many, many years, I had become an avid collector. And then along came Command Control 
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