For me as a kid it was Marx. It wasn't that my parents couldn't afford the more expensive Lionel or Flyer but rather they chose to spend $$ differently. Our neighbor would kid my Dad saying we must be rich to take all those long vacation train trips. Dad would laugh and say that is why we didn't have any money because we spent it riding trains 
. Instead of Lionel F3s I had this:
Breakfast aboard the City of Portland Dome Diner, C. 1963.
And yes, today I do have the trains I dreamed of while pouring over the pages of Model Railroader and Railroad Model Craftsman: an O scale switching pike:
So it's, indeed, all good.
