I've been into Lionel O gauge since I was in diapers. I got serious about the hobby in my early teens when used Postwar was still easily found and dirt cheap. I joined the LCCofA in 1973 and had built up a respectable collection by the time I went off to college. My original trains were kept by my dad for many many years. I continued to purchase trains off and on and even dabbled in N,HO and even G. I finally lost interest in trains for about a decade focusing solely on my family and career. Fast forward to 2000 and while working on a project in Cincinnati,I come across and wander in to Davis Trains (Milford). I saw a MTH Railking ATSF 2900 4-8-4 and couldn't resist all the sounds and bells and whistles! I jumped back into trains and started collecting Premier scale steam and Lionel scale steam locomotives as well as a few diesels and electrics until I rostered nearly 400 locomotives by 2010. Due to the nature of my work assignments, I was only home one month out of the year. I finally returned to my home state in 2015,bought a large home and now had the room to properly display and run all these trains. Bear in mind that most of the engines were new and never run. As I started to unpack and test locomotives,I found out that there was a high failure rate on the electronics and I won't go into details but this really soured me on the hobby to the point I lost interest for several months. Then lo and behold! My Dad called and told me to come and get all the boxes of trains that he had been safely storing for nearly 4 decades! I had never inventoried these so for many years I wasn't really sure what all I had. Unpacking all those for dozen or so banker's boxes was such sheer excitement and joy! I had forgotten how much I actually had and what I had collected back then. All those childhood trains brought back countless pleasant memories of a kinder,simpler time and my passion for Postwar and early MPC/Fundimensions was rekindled into a flaming passion again! Over the past 4 years I have sold/traded off most of those finicky modern trains and now I'm only focusing on USA made Lionel up to 1990. I still have 20-30 MTH and Lionel scale steam locomotives and they are all proudly displayed (They all run and will continue to be run). The layout I'm building now is all tubular and powered by 4 Z4000's and 4 ZW's. I've come full circle. Postwar is certainly my "Happy Place".
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