Who Does NOT Still Have Their Childhood Trains?

Yes & no - I have what were my Dad's 2 postwar sets , which  were the only trains we had for years & technically my first trains - Set 2533W from 1959 & the 2570W from 1961 w/ the 616 Santa Fe NW2 (just missing the 6828 flatcar - I never bought a new one as the load won't clear the tunnels on my layout, but maybe 1 day, just for display) . Also have his ZW (which I use to run my current layout) & his 495 beacon.   In 1988, I wanted a set of my own, so he took me to trainworld  & we bought the PRR Alco AA 5 car passenger set. The engines & cars having plastic trucks did not stand up as well as the postwar stuff did & I no longer have those.  I would like to repurchase them again at some point though

Another yes and no here.   My two big brothers were about 5 years older than me and received trains in their youth.  I just barely remember playing with the set so I probably inherited it when they hit the pre teen years.  All I remember is playing with an engine without a shell.  I think it was discarded at some point, perhaps by me (Ouch!).   I also still have the transformer, steam engine, cars, and caboose from an approximately 1965?  set.  That was probably my first "new" train.    I don't remember if I ever set it up around the Christmas tree at my parent's house during my youth but perhaps I did.  After graduating from College, I reignited a tradition by setting that oval up around the Christmas tree.  Every year I had to clean rust off the track oval to get the set running.  but soon after getting married I purchased a new oval of 027 track.  Then I added a few straights after my kids were born.  Finally, my son wished for his own train.  After that Christmas we were exposed to command control and we started purchasing sets and I continue. 

I have some of the old HO trains I received as a Christmas present at age 9-10 but the AF set which ran under our tree at my earliest memories has been lost to history.

- Greg

 I don't remember much about mine. I got it when I was 9 or 10, so 1970 or 71. We never had a layout, so I just ran it on the floor. Sometime in the 80's, my Dad said that guy who worked for him collected trains, and would I mind if he gave the train away. Having no idea that years later I would fall in love with toy trains, I said "yes". Off they went.

 The trains actually got off easy. I still had all sorts of toys in my basement, most notably all of my Johnny Lightning and Hotwheels cars and sets, and tons of Ford Motor Co. branded stuff. All of it was well kept and in boxes or cases, not tossed around the place. My siblings also had lots of stuff down there. Being ill, Dad rarely tackled the steps down to the basement. Sometime after his retirement, he found his way down there and decided to clean up. He had my Mom running down the stairs bringing beers, and up the stairs carrying out anything and everything she could carry. I could probably cover a semester of college for my kid with all of the stuff he tossed. All I was able to save was a handful of the Ford items. Still breaks my heart.

Putnam Division posted:

I feel very fortunate to have mine! I feel for all of you who lost their trains in the hiatus after childhood....

Peter

No kidding!  There are some really sad tales in this thread.

I did not have trains but MY kids had one and it is on my layout and runs great.

Brent

I don't. When I joined the Air Force, all my train stuff was set on a shelf in a very humid basement, left to rust and eventually discarded.

Yes and no - My Dad sold our Sears 746 military and space set, along with the Halloween General set, to a collector in the early 70's to buy us HO.  (yes I still talk to him LOL) 

I have since pieced together the 746 set and now have the LCCA General set.

For Christmas in 1985 I received my first Lionel train set.  It was an black Atlantic locomotive with a headlight and it smoked.  It came with three or four freight cars and maybe a few accessories.  That same Christmas my brother (360 days older than me) also received a Lionel train set, except his was a diesel freight set.

I didn’t care to finish opening my presents that Christmas because I loved that train set.  I ran of a figure-8 track plan that had a 90 degree crossover, but sometimes I set it up as an oval.  I remember the rumble of the train as it passed by, the smell of the ozone/smoke and the dim incandescent light when the living room lighters were turned off. 

Anyway, the following summer (1986), my brother decided that he was going to play master electrician and wanted to test out his new found skills.  He couldn’t find anything else other than my locomotive from my train set and wanted to see how it worked.  He took it apart, disconnected the wires, rearranged the smoke generator, removed the light bulb, etc.  In the end the locomotive was a lost cause.  I remember being so angry when he couldn’t put it back together.

I showed the locomotive to my dad and with tears in my eyes he tried to put it back together, but to no avail.  Sadly, I took the pieces and placed everything back into the set box and the set box was placed under my bed.  I decided that I was going to wait until I could fix my locomotive or find someone else who could.  

As time passed, my mom/dad was cleaning out my room and threw away my train set.  Everything went into the trash.  I was crushed.  I had no train set for the remainder of the year and couldn’t really occupy my time with anything else without having thoughts about the train that once was.

The following Christmas, I asked Santa for another train set.  I received another train under the tree and set it up quickly.  It was another steamer and freight set and I was in heaven.  As I played with my train, I gave my brother the look of death and the parents had a talk with him not to touch it. 

That set was great, but I’ll always remember my very first Lionel train set.

My parent sold off my standard gauge train sets while I was in grad school......although I still suspect that my brother-in-law stole them along with a lot of other stuff while I was away.

I don't have them all, though I do have the first set, a Lionel freight headed by Old 2026.  Two subsequent Marx tin 4-wheel freights were traded away for more trains.  Then there was the Marx ATSF E7 passenger set of 1957.  Parts of that were traded away as well.  But all the missing Marx items have been replaced...so happy.

I don't have any of it. All was either lost, broken or sold.

Texas Pete posted:

There's a lot of "I still have the train I got for (birthday, Christmas, etc.) in '45" type remarks in various nostalgia threads.

I got my American Flyers for Christmas of '51, but when I left the nest my folks gave my S-gauge stuff away, as neither of my younger brothers were into trains.

So I got to wondering how many of you, for whatever reason, no longer have the trains of your youth?

Pete

I actually still have all of my original Lionel, and the boxes, although some of the boxes have 40+ year old duct tape, or some masking tape on the flaps.  Fortunately, they were stored in higher shelves, since my entire 1959 series of Topps baseball cards was lost to one of the occasional basement floods resulting from 1950's era storm sewer design...

I definitely do still have them. A collection of American Flyer trains that included a 290 and a 302 locomotive. Set up only during Christmas, the trains running around the track pulling the red and yellow box cars, running under the tunnel and past the Marx water tower, loading the gondolas with anything the train could pull, turning the lights off and getting down to ground level to see the realism, and the chuff of the 290 were magic in my and my brother's eyes. That was 1965 and the magic is still there however the locos don't work any more and need to be refurbished, but I have AF and O gauge trains now and enjoy them all. 

My father and grandfather built a 4x8 layout with lots of Lionel trains and gave them to me for Christmas 1955 when I was 2 years old.  From what my mother told me, my father and grandfather played with them more than me. 

I played with the trains until I was about 8 and then they got put aside.  I sold them all as a teen-ager to buy a bass guitar (Gibson EB-3 for those who are interested).  I do have some regrets about selling the trains, but I still have the bass.

I got back into O gauge trains in 1983 when my wife mentioned that she missed having a train around the Christmas tree like she had as a child.  

O-gauger posted:

Yes and no - My Dad sold our Sears 746 military and space set, along with the Halloween General set, to a collector in the early 70's to buy us HO.  (yes I still talk to him LOL) 

I have seen pieced together the 746 set and now have the LCCA General set.

 

Ouch. Losing those two sets!   Glad you were able to repurchase them!

Thanks to all who replied!

Interesting stuff, although I am slightly bemused by the number of folks who, despite the subject line, posted that they still DO have their childhood trains and even exactly which ones.

I sympathize with all of you who would like to still have their childhood trains but lost them to natural (and unnatural) disasters.  I have no such regrets.  To me leaving the trains behind was just part of the normal progression of life, and I did manage to hang on to my Martin D-21, my Ampeg SSUB, and my Kingston Trio lps.  

I bet if I saw my trains today in the condition they were in when I left the nest I would be horrified.  It's amazing they were still working when I put them up.  My pals and I played hard with them.  That's what young boys do with their toys!

Pete

Not me! My childhood set was a Tyco HO Burlington passenger train (my brother had a Tyco Santa Fe freight) and we had a figure 8 on a ping pong table. I sold them to buy my first Lionel set. I do have my dad's 248 and R transformer (that only appeared around the tree at Christmas).

I enjoy reading these stories.

My brother and lost interest in our Lionel sets after we went off to college so they sat in our parent's basement for a few years. (Although I actually took them out once and set them up in my roommate's and my apartment and ran them for an evening.) After my father remarried the trains went to his stepsons and disappeared. I'm not interested in recreating the old sets since I'm in the process of setting up a scale layout.

Jay

Some, my paternal grandfather was a card carrying member of the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Fireman and his brother was a telegraph operator. Both were avid train enthusiasts, while my father' an airplane/missile guy, was also a strong supporter of us having trains and a layout so my younger brother and I were kept well equipped with post war Lionel, Marx and some Kusan.  As adults we took out that which were gifts and divvied up the rest. My brother gave his to his son what he didn't wreck he sold. I kept mine in boxes dragging it around the country for several decades; my kids weren't interested in O gauge but were into HO. When they grew up they didn't want the HO so I had boxes of that as well. With our kids gone we bought a smaller old house which while having a basement half of it is garage (rather typical of old Seattle hillside houses). Some years ago I was talking with a cousin of mine (my mothers side of the family); he remarked about our childhod layout and said he was so jealous over it as his dad had no interest in trains and aside from a Christmas present never contributed space, budget or effort toward a layout. Now of course, he is the Vice President of Engineering for a real railroad. That conversation threw a switch in me so I took my basement office and remodeled it to fit a layout which is primarily O gauge but located above and intersecting some of the higher O gauge scenery is a simple two track loop of HO. It's a work in progress still, I've replaced most of what my brother took when we broke the original up and I have picked up some pieces we didn't have but interested me when I was young.

Bogie

I sold all my Trains from my childhood when I was a freshman  in High School to buy my first CAR  !!!

Lost mine in the great house fire of 1991

Nope, not me.  But there's a little glimmer of hope.  In the mid50s we had a post-war Gilbert American Flyer S scale layout that my uncle built and gave my father for us. It had *lots* of operating accessories and consisted of a two section platform that joined in the middle and the xmas tree went in the center. The platform went into the basement and the trains went up to the attic after xmas.

After several house moves, I thought it was long gone -- in fact I never thought about it as a young adult until one day I visited my father at his second wife's house.  Lo and behold!  There in the basement against a wall was the platform with the oversized O gauge street lamps hanging off it by their wires!  (It used to be my job to attach and wire the street lamps, which were always removed from the platform to protect them in storage. Clearly the new kid wasn't doing his job :-).  So, there's a slim chance that my childhood AF train set still lives if it got passed on to the next generation and if he's got the electrical chops to maintain it.  A slim chance, but I can dream can't I?  My second hope is that the train set was sold to someone who cared. My third hope is that it or parts of it were captured on one of the 14 or so reels of 16 mm film my father shot that I need to copy to DVD ... There's more than one way to survive.

Tomlinson Run Railroad 

I had a Lionel set in the late 40's. 2-6-4 cab#??? with operating milk car etc. Switched to HO mid 50's. Gave the Lionels to my brother's sons when I went into the Navy in 60'. Got back into 3 rail around 1990.

I had a 1642 set and my brother had a 1645 set - both from 1961. We got these for Christmas 1961.  Both sets are long gone.  I've only seen one complete set of each, both on eBay.  At the time I saw them, I thought they sold for a high price - I guess you can put a price on memories.  I liked my brothers set more because his had a horn in the diesel and the helicopter car worked. Our dad got rid of them around 1966 or 1967.  My brother didn't mess with his very much, but I still liked playing with them.  Somehow my dad thought I would be happier with HO and he traded the two sets for some HO stuff.  I was not happy.  I think he wanted the HO. Although he had a few HO items, I don't recall him messing with them very much.  Don't get me wrong, I love my dad; I'm not mad at him.  My dad shot some 8mm film of us playing with them, which I still have although the film has been transferred to DVD.  I watch them every once in a while.

I had a marx set since we could not afford LIONEL. With five younger brothers and sisters, heaven knows where it is now. Wish I could ask my parents!

I found my first Lionel set from 69-70 in my Dads house 16 years ago.   My kids had just received a set from their grandpa.   I hadn't run it since going dcs but this thread got me to dig them out, oil and run.  Was interesting to compare to scale MTH which was significantly bigger and detailed.   O gauge has come a long way baby.

http://youtu.be/tedTHAtSpUk

My dad built a great 4x8 HO layout in the 1960's with multiple trains and a complete village. That was my start in model railroading. He had an old Lionel train from his childhood but that was forgotten and given away because we had the "better" HO scale trains.

The HO railroad was all sold off when we moved overseas in 1969. A couple years later when we were settled back in the states out west, I started HO modelling from scratch.

30 years after we had left, I visited our old neighborhood back east and looked up a friend of my deceased brother. He gifted to me the 1931 Lionel train that had belonged to my dad - after it had been out of our family for 35+ years. Probably the best gift I have ever received.

That was my late start in O-gauge. True story.

As something to accompany this interesting thread, I would like to offer up an idea for displaying the odds and ends of railroad items you may still have.  Rather than stow away things in a drawer, I found a small well-made drawer and arranged some items from my past to sit inside. The local hardware company cut a piece of glass to fit flush over the drawer top, and decorative fasteners were used to hold the glass in place. 

My "junk" includes my first Fisher-Price plastic train, a SF leather luggage tag, pocket watches, playing cards  and  QA&P ashtray. 

It may look like a mess to some, but I continue to get great enjoyment from it. In fairness, it hangs in my little corner of the upstairs rather than the main living area. 

I had a Tin Plate passenger set, a freight set pulled by a 221 steamer (featured in this month’s OGR), a Santa Fe NW-2, and a Burlington Passenger set. I also had many accessories. Sadly all broken, thrown away or sold. All Lionel. Somehow I still have a half used up tube of Lionel grease from the '50s.

When I decided to get back in the hobby, I replaced what I could with Williams reproductions and Lionel reproductions.

I now have a respectable inventory of trains.

Like so many others, I got involved with HO in the early/mid-60s. I traded my Milwaukee Road F3 AB (2378) with three aluminum Silver Range cars (baggage, coach, observation) for $90 worth of HO at the old Hobby House in Cleveland. I did, however, keep my 1862 General thinking that it was the more valuable of the two sets. While I wish I still had the 2378, at the time, I felt that I had made a fair trade so I hold no hard feelings.

I had a 1950s era Lionel Scout set (steam engine, coal car, a black gondola, an orange Baby Ruth car, and a red caboose) - don't remember the actual engine #.  I also had an American Flyer set.  I used to run them on a floor layout in our full sized (unheated and no insulation, of course) 3rd floor attic.  I had Erector set structures, Lincoln Log buildings and Tom Swift books for trestles. The layout was powered by an extension cord that ran to an adapter that was split off from the only ceiling light up there.  It was actually pretty cool - when you went up to run trains, you pulled the long string hanging down in the stairway and the light (one 60 watt bulb) went on AND the trains started running.   Sometime during my mid high school and college years, when my priorities were elsewhere, the trains (and the books) went missing.  I was never exactly sure what happened to them, although I think that my parents figured I was through running them and moved them on to another family.  When I got back into trains about 3 years after college with my 1st (of 2) sons, one of the early stand-alone cars that I got was a Baby Ruth car. Sure, it's 027 size is small compared to the other rolling stock that I have, but I run it a lot and it brings back many good memories.

Right after the War, Santa brought me a 1666 Prairie set that traveled with me from duty station to duty station until the mid-50's.  By then, I was seriously into flying model airplanes, both control line and free-flight.  One day my Dad told me that a sergeant that he worked with had mentioned his boy would like a toy train for Christmas, but times were tough.  Dad asked if he could give the sergeant my train set and I said sure, I wasn't using it.  Well, another 40 years went by and somehow in the back of my mind, I found I missed my 1666 and the pleasure it had given me while growing up.   Since then, I've compensated with another 1666 that Dr. Tinker rebuilt for me and a whole lot more. 

I don't.  My first trains were American Flyer S scale hand me downs.  Played with those trains for hours.  Eventually I transitioned to HO and we gave all the AF stuff away after i went to college.  Wish i had them now!

My childhood set was a modest one and they were given to charity. But I made up for that in later years by collecting.

Bob C.

All I have left is the 2037 2-6-4 steam engine my dad bought back in 1960. It had become a victim of basement humidity, but I had it restored.