Childhood train friends?

A few of my childhood friends had trains, some Marx but mostly HO.  Unfortunately, many of them are long since passed (too young, too young!); of the others, I have lost touch and have no idea.

Kind of a downer response, but I am curious to see how many have similar experiences. 

I don't remember ANY childhood friends with trains.  One or two years around the holidays, my dad (and I ?) put up our eclectic mix of Lionel, American Flyer, and Marx (my mom's childhood train).  All my friends would come over and we would run trains in awe, but that was about the end of it.

All my buddies had trains, all in HO. Like seven guys. We all had 4x8 layouts we dabbled in. But one, Bobby J. Is still into trains, HO. He is a scratch builder and does a fantastic job. I on the other hand moved to Lionel because of the heft and sounds and of course the history. We live fairly close to each other and are still friends. Keep in mind this all started when we met in 3rd grade. Now I’m 62, and he is 63. Good topic.

John, interesting topic. When I was growing up all my friends had trains. It was a divided camp. You were either Lionel or American Flyer. I guess what ever your parents or Santa gave you! I had Lionel. I seem to be the only one from the neighborhood that kept up the hobby. I have had some of my old friends visit and after seeing my modest layout wish they were back in the hobby. I have encouraged them to get back into the Worlds Greatest Hobby.

Tom

Reminds me of this line from the Polar Express "At one time most of my friends could hear the bell. But as the years passed, it fell silent for all of them." " Though I have grown old the bell still rings for me. As it does for all who truly believe." How true it is. . .

I didn’t have friends with trains. However, when my mother Relocated my trains to others, I became friends with the kids that got them! I got to enjoy them all over again!

I didn't have any rich friends.    The closest was a kid who had money to buy a whole album when the rest of us were buying 45s.

Nobody had trains, nobody had room.  Trains came out at Christmas, stayed out for three weeks and were packed away.  We did make the rounds to see family Xmas displays but no one had anything up after the holidays.

In the early 1970s my parents were renting the second floor of a carriage house that was part of a larger estate in a wealthy area.  I recall several of my friends and/or their dad's had trains.  One friend's father had a lot of postwar Lionel, I remember the Seaboard switcher's color scheme in particular, but not much else.  Another friend, who lived in a c. 10,000 SF Georgian-style mansion, had a huge O gauge train table in the basement.  It must have been at least 8 x 20 or larger, as their basement was huge and there was a lot of room for the layout.  They also had a doepke (?) outdoor track set up on their lawn, with the hand crank cars.  I always thought that was neat!  Lost touch with all of them, after my parents moved.

After my parents moved, I recall the next door neighbor's mother having Flyer S gauge (which is what we had growing up) and us setting up the trains in their basement to run for a few days. 

After high school in the mid 1980s, when in the US Navy, I met a friend who was from upstate NY and he and his father were into Lionel Postwar.  Lost touch with him after finishing that particular school and going to sea.

NWL

@ConrailFan posted:

Reminds me of this line from the Polar Express "At one time most of my friends could hear the bell. But as the years passed, it fell silent for all of them." " Though I have grown old the bell still rings for me. As it does for all who truly believe." How true it is. . .

ConrailFan, you hit the nail on the head.. "The bell still rings for me". Gets kinda faint on the bad days, but I am lucky to find friends like ya'll

Necrail, yup, ours went back in storage when the tree came down.

Brad, like you I did not have friends with trains. Even the one we had was but an oval that Grandpa bought at the Monkey Wards, and my dad and uncle ran it till we came around.

For Me and my brothers, I had grand children first. My cousin and I shared memories of her American Flyer, and with grandchildren, I am sharing what I have so that they can build memories. Christopher Robin said to Pooh Bear, "We didn't know we were making memories, we just knew we were having fun."  And now, as I get more proficient with fixing, I share with my brothers so they can run them under the tree with their youngsters... planting a seed, re-connecting with Cousins, and 'Having Fun".

JOHN, another great topic. Thanks for sharing, Nice to bump into you again after all these years, kindred spirits

Essentially none. I was born in 1948; got my layout in 1955. We were "solid working class" or "middle class" (whatever that meant; meaningless now), as were many others in the neighborhood, so trains could have been bought, but trains were not a "thing" with most people I knew. I had a nice permanent Lionel 027 layout with 2 spurs and a passing siding (only 1 loco, though....). I never put a train around a tree.

But - one guy up the street did have a bit of interest; he had a Kusan "2-rail tinplate" Alco set, then later a Marx 666 set from Sears. Ran it on my Lionel layout a few times. I liked it. But, his interest waned and never came back.

A couple of other guys had AF sets, both PA sets of some sort. One was blue and silver. Neither guy had much interest in trains.

Another guy across the street was literally using his "old" Lionel 2035 as a doorstop (ever picked up one of those?). We were around 13; 1961 or so. I asked if he wanted it, and he said no. So, after we asked his mother, it was mine, and it went into a drawer for years. I actually fixed it up (not to be confused with "restored") when I was in my 40's, complete with a NOS tender from Madison Hardware, still in New York.

That was it. There must have been more, as you saw trains and layouts in stores, especially at Xmas, of course. We had at least one Lionel (AF too?) Service Station (an appliance dealer). But so far as my life was concerned, I was pretty much alone with my hobby. Trains were not broadly a big interest among the kids/adolescents I knew.

I had HO trains on two different layouts, from the time I was 8 years old till I got out of HS and my parents moved. My dad had Lionel Tinplate that we ran at Christmas. I had an uncle and cousin that were into trains , he had Flyer.

My best buddy was not as into trains as I was but be liked them enough to hang out and watch me run them. We both loved Aurora HO race cars though and had several floor tracks over the years. We would race each other and always fight over who got the outside lane. We'd try and have right and left turns so it would even out. If you could win from the inside lane you were king for the day! When the AFX cars came out we were in heaven. We used to tweak them to see how fast they would go.

Yea- the bell still rings for me. My buddy? don't know- we've lost touch over the years.

Bob

Myself, and 3 of my friends had trains. One had American Flyer, one had "O" Lionel, and one had "O27" Lionel. I also had O27 Lionel. The one with O27 still has his trains, but has not set any up in years. He lives about 5 hours from here, and we talk about our trains quite often. We have been friends for 66 years.

Jeff

No.  I grew up in the 80's.  I guess some kids were into trains but I never met one (including me).  The hot toys were Star Wars and Nintendo.

Nope, not one friend had trains and, after about 8th grade, you learned very quickly not to mention the subject - ever.

Interesting topic.  From 1947 to 1959 I lived in northeast Philly in a slightly below middle income neighborhood.  I wasn't very far from the Pennsy Racetrack heading into 30th Street station.  This was the height of the baby boom era and you would have expected there to be loads of kids with electric trains but there were none-none.  We were the only family with electric trains.   We were not that well off but my dad still managed to have a set of trains around the tree every year until he passed in 1953.  We moved to Martinsburg , West Virginia in May of 1959 and the exact scenario repeated itself.  Nobody had trains except for my Grandfather.  I was quite fortunate to grow up around train lovers and I still have my Dad's and Grandad's trains to this day and they still run very well.

I ran trains with only one childhood friend, from 1st through 6th grade. He lived at the end of the block, and we both had Lionel layouts. We used to take our engines and run them on the other guy's layout as foreign power. I had diesels, and he had a steam engine, although I don't remember which one. Then we moved, and I lost track of him. That was about 1961 or so.

A couple years ago, he came to mind, so I searched his name. The only thing that came up was his obituary. He had died several years prior.

My father had American Flyer "O" gauge as a kid. He and my uncle bought me my first Lionel set (2035 freight) in 1950 when I was three.  This set was added to every year until I left for college in 1964. Just about every kid my age had Lionel trains during those years. I'm still in regular contact with my ole' train buddy John.  We met in 1959, and are both now working on our "final" layouts.

Hal

Growing up it was my brother and I with a layout in the basement. No one else I knew had trains.

Now I find maybe one person at different companies who has a layout. I’m in IT so everybody just works long hours.

In my new neighborhood there are quite a few guys interested in my layout. One has a 4x8 for his grandson. So there is hope yet.

I was a fan of American Flyer S gauge and got a neat set for Christmas once I turned five.  When we moved to a large rent-controlled apartment in '52 two other families in the building had American Flyer!  It was a 100% Flyer building.  We'd bring our stuff to each other's apartments and play trains.  It was great!

When I hit fifth grade a new kid moved into the 'hood and we instantly hit it off.  The first Christmas he was there his dad gave him and his kid brother Lionel sets.  We liked to debate, okay argue, the merits of each brand.  It's been almost seventy years and we still do, although I admit that the small setup in my garage is Lionel.  Always did prefer their action accessories, but Flyer had two rail track and the trains had much better proportions.

Pete

Growing up everyone in my neighborhood / school friends had trains - most had Lionel some American Flyer

By the mid to late 60’s started to see more slot cars and HO trains

As someone born in 2002, nope, I'm the only one who has trains.

Only one other kid in my area was a train nut growing up. But he prefers the largest scale trains... He worked at Six Flags and now works at Silver Dollar City running the trains. He takes regular trips out west to the various scenic railways. I think he is slowly getting into G though.

Growing up in the late-50's, my two older twin cousins had a large permanent Lionel layout in their basement.  My bother and I each had our own smaller basement layouts that went up the day after Thanksgiving and stayed up until sometime in January.  A friend of my brothers also had a large Lionel layout in his basement.  He was always getting new locomotives, rolling stock, and accessories.  We were jealous.

I met my closest train friend at work.  We had known each other for years and one day I was in his office and noticed a piece of Super O track sitting on his desk.  When I shared some pictures of around-the-tree layouts I had set up he started talking about his trains and we've been BFFs since then.

John

I’ll be 36 in May. None of my childhood friends had model trains.

I grew up in Centerville, Ohio (72-77) and then Northbrook, Illinois (78-84).  In Centerville, I had two friends that had HO sets along with me.  These were permanent layouts.  We had Atlas, Athearn  and Tyco..  In Northbrook, I had one friend that had a permanent layout. Atlas and Athearn were the manufacturers.  

Cool thread.

john

Born in 1951, I had a ZW running Lionel trains around the Christmas tree for as long as I can remember,  but none of my friends had trains.

However, relatives on my father's side, and on my mother's side,  of my family had Lionel trains.  I had 2 cousins, Jimmy and Billy, who were 5 and 10 years older than me that had beautiful basement layouts.

My father built me a very nice basement layout with trestles on a 4 by 8 foot plywood board on saw horses when I was 10 years old, but my cousin's layouts were at least twice as big and much more interesting.

Cousin Jimmy's layout was built by my Uncle Mario (a bachelor). That layout even had ramps upon which the trains would leave the plywood boards, run around the furnace and go to other places in the basement, and then return back to the plywood boards triumphantly. When I suggested to my father that we built ramps so the trains could leave the plywood board, he wouldn't have it, telling me "that's crazy." (He thought his brother Mario was crazy).

Guess what I did when I had my own house and kids as an adult?

Uncle Mario lives on in me! LOL, Arnold

I grew up in the mid 70s running my much older brothers awesome Post War FMs and F3s and lots of other great PW engines and accessories. He went off to college and then to the Military and I got to play with his trains. I was the only one in our upper middle class neighborhood with trains at that time. He took them with him when he got older and married. By then I was chasing girls. After I got married and settled in I managed to purchase most of the same stuff he has and I played with. Still playing with them as well as the modern stuff..

None of my close friends had trains. There was one kid I played hockey with who talked about his father's train collection. He took us down the basement where there was a huge layout that used up all the available floor space. The walls were filled from floor to ceiling with trains on display shelves. All O gauge Lionel I believe.  This would have been early 70s. I didn't even know people collected trains like that I just thought they ran them on the floor or up on saw horses like we did. I had told this kid about the Standard Gage trains we had.

I found out later from the kid that his father was furious that he had allowed us down the basement. I guess he was afraid we touched something. He let it be known in no uncertain terms that we were not welcome back there, but he would buy the Standard Gage trains from me. Needless to say I still have them but I always wonder what became of all that train equipment.

My cousins had an HO layout that they set up on a ping pong table in the basement...it would switch over to HO Slot cars at other times. Another set of cousins also had HO trains set up next to the basement bar...don't remember much about it except ALL of it was purchased from the local Two Guys Department store. There was the giraffe car where they ducked their heads to clear the bar and a "cop and robber"  type car where they would pop up and down from the roof hatches as the train ran around.

I had two buddies in St. Louis that had trains in the 1950s, me Marx, one Lionel and other American Flyer.  Our layout were on the living room floor for about 2 weeks during the Christmas holidays.  My family moved to the county and I lost touch as we moved three more times through high school.  My brother and I lost interest in trains about age 8 and 10 and moved on to model building, U control planes and boats with radio control that had tubes!

I got interest in trains 1970 s when married, with two children, and built a portable layout, in Jamaica, that moved 7 times and to 6 states.  This is the same layout I have now and have written about in long topic on OGR.

Several years ago I located one of my buddies from the 1950s and contacted him, he replied and followed up but he dropped the communication.  We never got to writing about trains but I found out he was an engineer with McDonald Douglas in St. Louis where his father had been a machinist when were were kids.  My father had been an engineer for 43 years with Alcoa  and I was an engineer for Alcoa for 20 years.  We both sort of followed our fathers.

Charlie

As of 2023 I am 67 and growing up in the 60s I had a 16 X 5 layout with a small L on the one end and I was the only person in my neighborhood that had trains of any kind that I knew of, Once or twice a year I will connect with someone that I knew growing up, and they will always mention I remember your trains. I now have a permanent layout in my attic which is 12X8 with a 5 foot L. One of my cousins had a small layout in his basement for quite a few years growing up, and he's been to my house and loves what I have but he never did anything himself.

I had several friends who had trains in my younger days.  Only one, besides myself, had a permanent layout.  He had HO and I had Lionel O gauge.  We would spend our summer days train watching at various locations around town.  We made it a point to be on hand when the local came to switch the grain elevators in town.  When the weather wasn't fit to be outside we went to one of our houses and ran trains.  I remember sitting at his kitchen table perusing the Walthers catalog and dreaming of our ultimate layout.  He and I are the only ones of the group still involved in the hobby.  After high school we each followed our own paths and didn't really stay in touch.  About ten years ago I ran into him at a train show and we reconnected. He has gotten me involved in operating sessions with a group of local HO guys.  We get together about once a month to run trains and catch up.

Tom

This thread has been a real eye-opener.

I was born in 1953 and played with Lionel trains as a kid (and still do). I always assumed trains were still something most kids my age had (along with an Erector set and a Gilbert chemistry set). But as I think back on it, I can't remember even one of my friends who was into trains. A few had gotten starter sets, but they never played with them. One kid had his dad's AF set but he only took it out of the box only once.

I grew up in Morristown, N.J., about 30 minutes from the Hillside factory, and I can't remember even one train shop in town. There was a general-purpose toy store that stocked a few Lionel trains and some Plasticville, and the early big-box stores carried Lionel trains but only at Christmas. I can't remember any store that sold AF.

From this thread, I get the sense the experience of other posters in my age group was similar. I wonder if Lionel itself saw this handwriting on the wall.

IMO, this is an excellent topic, and I have a funny, but true, story to share.

I had two 1st cousins, one about 10 years older, and one a few years older, than me, who had more and nicer Lionel trains on bigger layouts, than I had. However, I had no childhood friends with trains, except I almost had one.

Almost had one? How could that be?

Carl Sherman and I were about 9 or 10  years old. We were becoming friends. One day, he came to my house with a Lionel diesel. I had 2 Lionel steamers, a 2065 and 2055 Hudson.

Carl wanted to trade his diesel for my 2055 Hudson. I thought that was a good idea and told him so.

Now, here's the funny part. My mother overheard this trade talk, nixed the deal,  kicked Carl out of the house, and chastised me for attempting to trade one of my trains!

She told me: "don't ever try to sell or trade any of your Lionel trains again; your trains are nicer than Carl's trains; and your trains will go up in value over the years."

So, I collected and operated Lionel trains (and a few other kinds of O Gauge trains), off and on, for the next 59 years and never sold or traded any of them until about a year ago when a local train buddy, not a Forumite, convinced me to trade a few of my trains for a few of his.

By the way, once I became a teenager, I never sold or traded any of my trains until recently, not because my mother told me so, but because I loved them all.

Obviously, my late beloved mother, a sweet. sensitive Victorian lady, loved them too. Arnold

9 -11 years of age I remember:

My friend Richie couldn't say the word "switch", it always came out "svitch".

My friend Phil and I having tug of war contests with our engines; mine a 2328 Milwaukee Road GP7, his a Lackawanna FM. He always won, I couldn't figure it out.

Also with Phil, combining tracks to bulld huge temporary floor layouts

Growing up in the 1960s, I had very few friends who had trains. Our family trains only came out at Christmas.

Most of my friends were all into HO scale Aurora Model Motoring slot cars.

Being a kid in the early 1970's, I had 1 friend that had a K-Line starter set and a few extra items.  I thought his trains were weird because they weren't Lionel. I remember running our trains together, though.

I convinced another friend to ask for a Santa Fe diesel set for Christmas so we could build a layout together in my basement.  I had 2 starter sets: an MPC plastic steam set I had for several years that my grandmother bought me, and my brand-new DT&I switcher set I got for Christmas.  We somehow squeezed together enough money to buy a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood, a can of green spray paint for grass and black spray paint for roads.  His mom took us to a hobby shop and bought us a bag of dirt and black rock.  When we attached the track to the plywood and sprayed the paint, we realized we could never build a layout because we did not have the money to buy anything else.  So, my friend grew bored with his trains, decided to light his train cars on fire and smash them because he thought the simulated train wreck would be cool.  He then proceeded to run his Santa Fe diesel off our plywood table and let it crash on the floor.  At some point i asked him if I could keep the remains of his set and he said yes because, otherwise, he was going to trash them.

Today, I still have his Santa Fe diesel and the transformer that came with it along with that plastic steam engine starter set and my DT&I set.  I always knew that someday, when I could afford to build a layout, I would.    I'm now building my 4th layout and have dozens of engines and hundreds of cars and more buildings and accessories than I ever dreamed of owning.  Man, the switches and crossing signals alone would have seemed like striking gold in my childhood eyes of the early 1970's. 

Mike

Which childhood????  Its never too late to have a happy childhood.  Childhood friend as a youth would be my dad.  Great post!!!!

I grew up poor.  Other than a cheap HO set for Christmas that my brother and brother in law tore up that day, I never had any trains and I don't know anyone else that did.   As I got older, I've only met a few people that have a layout.   My daughters friend works for the railroad.   "Foamers" are those that stand along the tracks and take pics and foam at the mouth over trains.   The Burlington Northern route divided my small town.   I spent many a time waiting for the trains to pass.  9:00 was the Amtrak.  Trains were a part of my youth growing up in a small town.  That's where my interest lies.  

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