I think the assumption that everyone had toy trains in the 1950s and previously is wrong. Even Marx trains were expensive for many families and parents just could not afford Lionel/Flyer, or had other priorities (like food, rent and saving up for a car). Big disappointment for me staring at the Lionel and Flyer catalogs that I sent away for, for 10 cents or 25 cents. I did not know any friends with trains although perhaps some of my baseball teammates had them and didn't mention them in our teens. All of my friends had working class or lower middle class parents and mostly very small apartments, which may have been a space consideration, I suppose. We weren't poor, but material stuff was in short supply. Just glad my folks could afford a baseball mitt 
. I did have some nice comic books which I regrettably did not keep. 10 cents each in the 1950s.
My first memories of toy trains was at a neighbor's home, his dad had an 00 layout under construction. I later found a Marx engine that I played with on the concrete walk outdoor home until the wheels were completely worn off. In 1952 my brother and I received an American Flyer 282 and four New Haven cars with an oval of track and some plasticville buildings. We ran that train mercilessly and pretty much wore it out, l still have the cars. I did have some friends with trains but they all had Lionel trains and the debate went on. In highschool I had a friend who had American Flyer trains but after graduation we parted ways. 30 years later l met him again in a small tin plate train store he opened. Again we lost touch but, some years ago we met again, now, both still with American Flyer, and we do meet occasionally, still friends.
Ray
None of the kids I grew up with had a passion for trains be it toy, model or real trains. I was the one kid who did. There was a man in our community who had a permanent layout of American Flyer trains which I got to see when I was quite young, perhaps 5 or 6 years old. I imagine his layout was 5 x 9 ft. It ran 3 trains .. one train ran on an elevated trestle which really impressed me. I loved the smoke that belched from the steam locomotives! More than ever came out of my Lionel 2065.
My friend John got a Marx set several years after I received my first electric train set from Santa. He got the General 4-4-0 American type steamer with an open horse car and two wooden type passenger cars. His set was basically an oval with a couple of manual switches for sidings. I think my Lionels inspired his asking Santa for set. We briefly would bring our trains to each other's house and play with them but that seemed to fade quickly.
I had another friend who lived up the street. His parents would have a Marx set around the tree each Christmas, however, he had little interest in that set. I always enjoyed seeing the two engines at the point of their respective trains race around his tree though!
The only other kid in the neighborhood who had a set of trains, basically a hand me down from his much older brother, was not interested in trains at all. I always thought that was such a shame because he had a wonderful permanent layout in his basement which included all the best that Lionel had to offer IMHO ... GG-1, Santa Fe F3 AA set, Berkshire 2-8-4, and a Pennsy Turbine 6-8-6! He never played with any of these great trains or his layout! I was always in disbelief when he'd tell me that he got tired of playing with his train years ago. In my young mind I just couldn't understand how anyone could not be less than ecstatic about owning and having the means to play with these phenomenal trains that I sooo drooled over when browsing through the Lionel catalogue.
None of my school friends were passionate about trains, toy, model, or real, from grades 1-12. I was the loan train nut. My brother sort of like the trains but he never caught the total bug.
My passion for trains began at age 2. At age 3 I received my first toy train ... a wind up set which brought me lots of joy. I received my electric first train from Santa at age 4. It was a Lionel O27 set which ran around our family Christmas tree. I don't recall the Lionel set number, however the set consisted of the 2065 steam loco, operating milk car, operating log dump car, and the operating NYC Pacemaker boxcar, with a Sunoco 3 dome tank car and Lionel Lines caboose .. plus the 1033 transformer. What a phenomenal Christmas that was!!! I still have the complete set which works fine except for the log dump car.
After the first Christmas of the Lionels running around the tree, my dad built a 4x8 train table which could be easily assembled for the Christmas season and dismantled shortly thereafter. That's the way trains were part of our family culture, like many other folks trains were part of the Christmas season. When my brother turned 4 he received his first set of Lionels. Dad built a second table for his train. Eventually in years to come we would combine our two tables and therefore made a large 8x8 layout which we had in our room ( my brother and I shared a bed room as our house was quite small ). The annual ritual was that the day before Thanksgiving ( usually a half day of school ) my brother and I would haul the train tables piece by piece from the wood shed to our bedroom. We'd then assemble the tables and paint the plywood table tops with a green paint which fragrance permeated the entire house. To this day whenever I smell fresh paint I immediately think of those wonderful times. By Thanksgiving morning the paint was dry and we'd begin laying track. I created a new track plan just after Halloween each year ... because that's when the anticipation of putting up the trains increased in intensity. I showed the plan to my brother to get his input and make changes accordingly.
The day after Thanksgiving usually meant finishing up the track work and beginning the electrical work to get trains running. Once the trains were running and track switches worked okay, we'd screw down the track. Saturday was alway the family trip to downtown Baltimore. This was always huge fun!! We'd visit Frenche's Sporting Goods, who had a large layout of Lionel and American Flyer trains, Tubman's Toy Store another Lionel/American Flyer dealer, and all the department stores. In those days each department store had layouts. I'd purchase scenery material usually at Taubman's because they had the best discounts. Of course at lunch the Lionel catalogue was poured over by my brother and me ( we each had one ) plus the American Flyer Catalogue too. AND sure enough we wanted practically everything in the Lionel catalogue!
Once returning from Baltimore on Saturday evening, the scenery work began. After church on Sunday the scenery work continued until some point in the evening when the scenery work was declared done by my brother and me. I just loved to do the scenery work! He liked the putting together of the table, the wiring, and putting together the track plan .. as I did too! ... However, the scenery work was what I enjoy the most!! During those days Wednesday - Sunday, I didn't hang out with my buddies because building the railroad was top priority.
My buddies would like to see our layout each year. They would even tell others that they should see my train layout because it was really cool! However, that was about the extent of their excitement and I'm glad that they got at least that excited.
It was only in my adult years that I developed train friends.
What wonderful stories that ring a bell, apparently, for all of us. I was born in 1941 and my first recollection is of a Marx Jubilee engine that last night I worked on. The wheels are free, contacts clean but it won't run. I read where they made the engines in many varieties from 39 to 46. It isn't the most plain Jane but close. There was a pilot truck. The smoke stack has the red film. No lettering or numbers on the engine. There is an emblem below cab window that includes a vertical 10 (needed a magnifying glass to read).
Dad would set up the train (4 wheel cars) when he had to baby sit us three boys. I received a Marx set in early 50s that I still have. The train was put away after 8th grade largely until I had kids of my own staring in late 70s. Got back to playing with trains again until they lost interest. During the 70s a good friend gave me a AF frontier train that is a very good runner yet. Another gave me her son's AF train set that included a 290 engine with link coupler that still runs. In the 80s, my wife came home from a neighborhood yard sale with a Silver Bullet engine, well played with, a few pieces of track and a Marx transformer. All for $3. Ran the Silver Bullet last night. The transformer sat on a shelf until recently. It now powers a small Marx oval mounted on a sheet of plywood that I bought from local cabinet shop.
Skip ahead until grand kids than the trains came out around Thanksgiving on the walk in attic. About 3 years ago my one grandson, about 10, said we shoulds mount the AF on a board. So decided to build a layout. I became hooked. He's now 13 and has lost interest in my layout but does have his own HO. Not sure his interest will last .
Lastly, my favorite train probably is the Marx wind up I purchased in the 40s that did't need adult supervision.
Thank you all for this opportunity to share our stories, both old and new.
Rich older boys who lived in a large house up on a hill across the street had an American Flyer layout in a room attached to the garage. They let my little sister and me (mostly me) look at but not touch if we promised not to tell we discovered they were playing doctor in their backyard clubhouse with our two older sisters. The boys attended an all-male military school and had no sisters, so I suppose girls were a novelty to them. We tattled anyway, because they only ran the trains once around the double track layout and said that was enough. Perhaps anxious to return to the clubhouse.
What, me worry?
Based on my age and going through middle school and high school in the 1980's, playing with trains was a recipe for not having friends, especially when it came to my feeble attempts at dating in high school. 
However, it is funny to me later in life how many people I went to high school with who saw my layout say how cool they thought it was. It just wasn't fashionable to say so at that age.
Most of my train friends today are my parents age or at least within 10 years of that age. As I have stated numerous times on this forum, I never left this hobby which is different from most of my friends in the hobby today. My core interests in the hobby have never changed, but overall, my hobby has expanded greatly over the years on the roads I collect and model and the scales I model in.
The best friend I have in this hobby to this day is my father. Like any father - son relationship it really grew when I became an adult, but we have always shared the hobby like he did with his father. He built our first permanent layout in HO that was in the house I grew up in for almost 20 years. To this day we spend most of our time talking about trains, our recent finds, and projects we are working on. I have a modular layout that I cannot set up at my home currently, so it is going to my parents' house in the near future to get some use.
Well, I got my start with toy trains early in the early '50's when my grandfather, a retired PRR signals engineer, built a beautiful 4 X 8 two-part low rise varnished plywood layout, complete with two remote operation switches and inner and outer loops, and gifted it to me for Christmas. Locomotion was provided by a hefty Marx 1829 steamer (non-smoking) and tender, pulling a set of Santa Fe passenger cars or, in the alternative, a full freight consist (the layout, along with the 1829 engine and the observation car, have disappeared in the mists of time, but all the rest of the rolling stock is still in regular use on my layout).
Like everyone else I was aware of with toy trains, this was purely a seasonal layout, brought down from the attic and set up for the holidays, then broken down and moved back to storage in January. While it sparked in me a life-long interest in trains, the shortcomings of the layout were painfully evident, even back then. Since everything was nicely secured to the layout, I was not afforded the opportunity to assemble, disassemble and reassemble the track, even seasonally, and the beautifully varnished surface resisted all my clumsy efforts at realism (practice note: green construction paper doesn't really simulate grass very well!).
OTOH, I was one of a relative handful of kids my age with a train set. One age-mate lived a couple of blocks from me, and I remember he had a really nice American Flyer set, with a *smoking* engine and two-rail track! I was vaguely aware that others had seasonal displays, including the really wonderful annual display at the local volunteer fire company, but I had no idea that some were able to make toy trains a year-round hobby. I later dabbled in building a non-seasonal HO layout when I was a teen, but my next functional layout was not until the '80's, when my own kids reached a certain age. Yes, it was a seasonal around-the-tree layout, which was eventually moth-balled when the kids aged out, until local grand-kids came along and I had the excuse to resurrect and expand the earlier layout into an all-seasons hobby a few years back. Of all my classmates, I can only think of one who continued an interest in model railroading into adulthood, and even his has remained more of a seasonal preoccupation.
1960's, Perinton, NY. Dad had a 12 x 6 O27 & GarGraves layout in the train room with benches on 2 sides, there was a bar that had all of our engines lined up on it. I had boxes & boxes of "O" w/ 042 switches, and crossings, to make the layout flavor of the day and it got changed a lot on the carpeted floor in the same room.
One neighbor's pop had a prewar O set that was too big to run on the O27 layout, so dad got it running for him on my floor layout.
Their neighbor next door had a sizeable maybe 12 x 4 table with Kusan trains and Strombecker slot cars. I thought the Kusan stuff was very cheaply made, I never saw it run as it was never really in shape to.
At the far side of the circle was a family that did HO - lots of Tyco. The older brother had Aurora slots, those seemed to run better than the trains but they also spent a lot of time cleaning the road racing track.
By the time MPC took over, we had moved to a larger house on the other side of the Erie Canal and my HO friend also moved to the same neighborhood, but the one friend now living across the street had his dad's O equipment from the 1930's O72 streamliners to the late 1950's diesels & steam. He had a lot of O-72(I only had 16 curves) w/ switches, and a very large carpeted family room to set up a lot of high-speed track for those long trains w/ MPC needle-point axles to really stretch out... our 12 x 6 O-27/GarGraves layout made the move with us to a smaller basement area.
A friend from church who also moved from Perinton across the canal & now went to the same school as I had a simple 6 x 20 HO layout that ran OK, I built him a transistor throttle for his local line for better control. There was a lot of AHM, Tyco, some Rivarossi. The layout was integrated with Aurora HO slots, of which I owned several cars and had more of an interest than the trains because I did not have slots at home. He had a few boxes of Lionel Super O, and 4 locomotives, w/ cars, none of which made up any cataloged(or otherwise) set that his father bought used, all from one individual. Sometime in high school his father had me get all of the Lionel working for him, and I bought him more track & bus bars around college. He set up the Lionel in college and in his apartment while the HO was in storage, all of the trains & slots were then stored in Kalamazoo when he made his first move to San Francisco. They came back to storage in Lima NY, upon his return to Rochester in 1989 until 1996 when he got married, they went to San Francisco. They came back to his new house in Rochester in 2007, and then all given to me in 2018 when he divorced.
Growing up in the 50s, in North Philadelphia, trains were a big deal. The Thanksgiving parade on television meant Lionel commercials. Shortly after that the platform was prepared in the basement. This was the same scenario for three of my four buddies. Then the announcements were made; “we’re bringing the platform up tomorrow night”. The platform had a place of honor; in a corner of our living room. Ours was 4x8 and the legs were pipes. The legs were tall enough so that the furniture would fit underneath. It was the perfect set up because when you came home from school, or down from the bedrooms, there was the platform in all it’s splendor. We didn’t know what incense was but those smoke pellets left a great scent.
Jay
