Your Trains Your Parents Couldn't Afford

Funny you should mention that Arnold.  I have been thinking about that lately, about what I can have now vs what I had and what I wished for when I was a kid.  I got my first train set when I was six, it was a used Lionel Santa Fe Freight set with F3s, I still have it 53 years later.  When I got that set my dad also gave me a brand new Lionel for 1966 Catalog, I literally read it until it fell apart, dreaming of the pieces I would one day own.  I have many of those today and treasure the thoughts that some young boy or girl and their parents had when they bought or were given the trains many years ago that I now own.  I gravitate towards the toy train spectrum as in your train in the video as they remind me of when I was six getting my first.

Thanks for the reminder of simpler days.

Chris S.

Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Many of us have experienced the euphoria of getting later in life what was unaffordable for our parents and us when we were kids.

Took me about 60 years to get these top of the line Lionel Postwar NY Central F3s with Magnetraction from the early 1950s:

Better late than never.

Arnold;

First, do you lay awake nights thinking of all these interesting topics??? 

Second, “Don't they look good circling Yankee Stadium“ - in a word, NO 

Now, as to you query, two stories...

I got my love of trains from my mother. When she was young, she spent many a summer going from Brooklyn down to Asbury Park on the Jersey shore, so she was well acquainted with the PRR GG-1’s. She always wanted one, but it just wasn’t ever in the budget. When I was in college, she gave me an MPC 8753 (which I still cherish), so when I graduated and got my first job (on 26th Street and Park Ave. South), I walked down to Madison Hardware on 23rd and Park Ave. South and bought her a 2360. Would have preferred a 5-stripe, but really love the larger keystone. 

As for me, I always LOVED the Santa Fe F3’s (also not in the budget) - so colorful and they looked like they were speeding along even when standing still!!! I finally went down to Madison Hardware and bought myself a 2383 set. 

One of these days, I’m going to have to set up a conventional track to run some of my old memories.

Enjoyed reading the responses.  Great thread.  Thank you!

Arnold, I have a memory of showing my father a Lionel catelog with the gorgeous Santa Fe  F3's with aluminum passenger cars and on the next page the NYC F3 set with aluminum passenger cars. "look dad, the whole  set only costs $99!  This led to a stare with that look. Ok.  not until forty + years later as an adult did I aquire a worn A-A set from a friend and collegue. Wow! They were beaters, but that did not matter. I also was gifted his childhood trains magically realizing my childhood wish list, a 2360 GG1 and beater Santa Fe F-3's A-A, a ZW, some rolling stock. I was on a time machine adventure! They hadn't been run since the Sixties.  

Recently I bought a decent NYC f-3  A-B-A. Growler power. 

I agree that encircling your  Yankee stadium All postwar is king.

APPLES55, as an adult  you bought your mom a 2360. This was very moving. Thanks for sharing.      Also, Arnold IS the topic master.

FIREONE, History of joyful  first time experiences are imagined in the postwar ones I own now and run as well.  

Mass produced durable 50's and 60's  American toy trains still are an available thrill for me no matter what condition. Run 'em in good health everyone.

Arnold, I didn't even try to get my Pop to buy me the center fold Santa Fe and passenger cars. Knew it would never happen. I would get a log car or crossing gate for Christmas and was happy with those. One of the first things I bought when I went to my first local TCA meeting was a A-A Santa Fe with four passenger cars. $100 was the going price at the time. Got a baggage car a little later. They were going for $25 depending what size doors. Then a Santa Fe B unit. That set was every boys dream but only for the rich kids. Don

Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Many of us have experienced the euphoria of getting later in life what was unaffordable for our parents and us when we were kids.

Arnold,

You are exactly correct in my case. My father's family could not afford to buy him any Lionel trains when he was a youngster. By the time I came on the scene, he was able to buy me a small set when I was four years old and a Santa Fe 2207W ABA diesel freight set a few years later. I believe they were the first Lionel trains he ever purchased. They were for me, but he liked them too...

MELGAR

Good thread. My parents could afford a Marx set, sorry Lionel was a bit out there. The big splurge was a rossmoyne doepke la France ladder truck. Had to be a big part of a weekly pay check back in the day. 

Apples55 posted:

Arnold;

First, do you lay awake nights thinking of all these interesting topics??? 

 

Paul,

No.

They pop into my head when not even trying. Why that happens is a total mystery to me. 

This Lionel Postwar NH EP5 may be the one I coveted the most as a child, and did not get until my mid-50s. My mother and I would take the New Haven from downtown Mt. Vernon, NY to Grand Central Station when I was a young child.

Arnold

Since a lot of the focus here is on Santa Fe engines and cars I might as well share my story.

I guess it must have been in the early 60s that my Dad built a basement O gauge layout - two ovals and a figure 8 in the middle on trestles that he made himself. My best friend, whose father modeled in HO in a serious way, was very dismissive - "Call that a layout?" he said. At that time we had the old Santa Fe O scale layout in the Chicago Museum of Science and Industry and I recall being totally fascinated by that when he took me to see it a number of times.

But it was not until nearly 30 years later, when I got into the hobby myself, that I realized how significant was my Dad's investment in time and money in what he had. Aside from the layout being constructed on a table that was about 8' x 12', there was a massive ZW transformer, Super O track, a Lionel Lines steam turbine and a fine Santa Fe F3 A-A set. Of this, the turbine and one of the F3s survive and are, respectively, in my brother's and my possession. The amount all this must have represented out of a steel mill worker's pay was very considerable. 

I don't remember much about the rolling stock other than there was a vintage operating milk can car. I always wanted an aquarium car and eventually bought a couple myself.

So this is an example of stretching the budget to get something that was and is prized. I have no doubt I have exceeded my Dad's spending and I think he'd have been fascinated by what I have, which includes a few VL and MTH Premier engines the likes of which just did not exist way back when.

I am delighted you'all seem to enjoy this topic. 

It occurs to me that many of the original trains we wanted were top of the line Postwar Lionels. We may have gotten those exact same trains as adults. Or, we may have gotten modern trains by different manufacturers later on that reminded us of what we wanted and didn't get as kids. I think MTH has done a great job fulfilling those childhood dreams for us.

For instance, I never got a Lionel FM Trainmaster diesel, which I regarded as an awesome impossible dream as a child. My first FM Trainmaster was this MTH Railking Proto 1 smoking diesel that I bought about 20 years ago:

Arnold

Just about all of my model trains are modern, although some of them are more than twenty years old. Whether running them, looking at their detailing and paint schemes, listening to their sounds, or just admiring them, I am impressed by every one of them. I couldn't have imagined having such trains as a youngster.

MELGAR

My mum would take me down to the toy shop/hobby shop and buy me a small die cast "Dinky Toy" and I would grab any free train catalogues or flyers take them home and pretend this is what I would buy if I had any money. I don't have to do that anymore but I still look and pretend....sometimes!  Roo.

Melgar, yes you can I'll bet. I remember to this day laying on the carpet just looking at the detail of my 2026 loco. Got it in 1948 Christmas. I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever saw. What detail. Don

Sorry, but I could not.

MELGAR

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.

geysergazer posted:

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.

That's pretty awesome - your dad had his priorities straight! It was one thing for me to wish for a set of F-3's with some shiny passenger cars in tow, but actually riding in one of those cars never even occurred to me. Apparently it was beyond my imagination. So when my first opportunity appeared on the horizon many years later, I jumped at it, and loved it! 

My Mom got us nice Christmas presents each year, but other than a Tyco HO set I got at 8 years old one Christmas - which was an added gift from St. Nick ~ probably because of my sledding accident a few weeks prior - trains were not included. I learned later in life why: they were prohibitively expensive compared to other toys and games. Of course, if I really wanted them, I could've opted to include them in my letters to Santa, but as kid I knew what was and what wasn't reasonable to ask for.

To this day, I consider trains expensive. In the 1990s, I could barely justify buying a Railking steam engine. Now, I am buying scale steamers from MTH and Lionel.

Its amazing how the change in disposable income has changed from the generations.

geysergazer posted:

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.

The closest experience I had to this was riding with my mother on a PRR passenger train pulled by an awesome GGI from Penn Station in NYC to Princeton Junction train station in NJ to visit my aunt and uncle, and eating peanut butter/cheese crackers and having a sida during the train ride, and I loved it. LOL, Arnold