These are the most "vintage" sets I have. In the rear is the Lionel #1700 streamliner set that my grandfather bought for his elaborate Christmas layout during the depths of the Depression. I never saw the fabled layout, but my mother and her sisters told me about it in the most glowing terms for years. The power unit and two trailing cars are in near-mint condition, since Granddad was very careful about taking care of them -- to the extent of not letting his three girls handle them! For some reason, when I tracked it down, the pickup slider shoes were missing, but once I installed replacements, it ran like new.:
On the bottom is my father's set, a Christmas present in, I believe, 1929. The #252 locomotive came to me dismembered and thoroughly dead, in a shoebox that my mother nearly threw away. I put a lot of time into restoring it, and now it gets run every Christmas.
