Great thread. I had an interesting history with my early years of electric trains.
I was very young, probably 5 or so and my dad had bought some HO trains if I remember correctly. They didn't last long, they were probably Tyco. This was about 1973 or so. Then I remember a year or two later, my dad bought some lionel stuff. I remember a basic steam loco, probably the smallest that Lionel had at the time. I also remember a Soo switcher diesel and matching Soo caboose (I think). We had them for a year or so then they disappeared. No idea what ever happened to them. And I only remember we set them up a few times.
Then around 1976-77 I bought with my xmas/birthday money my first train set of my own. It was another crappy Tyco set but I was so excited to get it. I really liked it because it was a Tyco Broadway Limited trainset. Had Tyco's version of the GG1 (no middle trucks, just the 2 outer trucks) and 3 cars, sleeper, dining, observation. I loved that set even though it never ran right. Still have the cars and the loco but the loco is missing the motor drive and I tried to poorly repaint it back in the mid 80's. I just keep it since i bought it new when I was a kid.
Around 1980 or so I started buying more decent train stuff, bought a bunch of Athearn blue box HO kits, mainly Amtrak stuff. I grew up in CT near New Haven and took the train to New York grand central so I have lots of fond memories of passenger trains so i've always been drawn to more modern passenger stuff.
I also have memories of one of my step-father's best friend who had a spoiled kid who had a rather big collection of post-war Lionel stuff. I mainly remember seeing how he didn't take care of the Penny F3 engines that he had. He was a kid that liked destroying stuff. I was jealous of the trains he had.
I never really ventured into O scale in my later years. I would buy HO stuff and the later on N stuff over the years. However it wasn't until over a year ago when i was at Value Village (thrift store) and they had a new -in- box K-Line train set from the 90's in there. Was 40 dollars but I had a 30 percent coupon so I bought it and then started buying O scale stuff ever since.
I can't afford much but I do buy what I can when I see a good deal.
Bought a neat Pennsylvania Lionel Trainmaster engine and 6 matching older Williams Pennsylvania Madison passenger cars a few weeks ago for I think 200. All still in boxes and in perfect shape. Went to the train show yesterday and bought a pair of MTH long wheelbase Madison passenger cars "new in box" for 43 dollars.
I also have a few other Williams passenger sets, a beautiful Santa Fe A-B-A set with 5 cars, a Great Northern passenger set with an A-B.
One of these days I want to setup a layout but that is going to wait until we buy a different house which i hope has a shop. Then I can have a larger set finally.
I also enjoy buying older Lionel stuff and rebuilding/resurrecting them. I don't like seeing older Lionel stuff that was abused and abandoned just wasting away, I would rather try to fix it up and get it working again.