what was everyones frist train set

[utdave]

 I got mine when i was 8 years old    the maker of my frist  is called  Kusan-auburn, inc .  K series   2 rail system   4 striaghts and curves to make full circle .  the train was called the satelite .  had a up  alco F engine with speed adjustment on top with electrical hookup to send power to car behind  which was a blower that put a styrofoam ball to float in the air then powered out to nest car that was a search light that went around and around  when trained moved  then there was a radar dish on the next car that spun also ,  gondola with satelite loads with containers  then the UP caboose.  got it used for 10 bucks.  ran that thing to death  but still works busted some handrailings here and there and still have it.  this guy shows some of these trains they made and gives details abount them.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUm4d_zvdEE

and here it is in action

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShGN_AZsTP8


have fun watching Dae

[jward]

since i grew up in a family of modellers, i never got a "first train set" per se.

my first locomotive was an arnold rapido FA1 in erie colours, which we ran on our n scale christmas layout. it features a die cast body and like many n scale locos of 40+ years ago a very high top speed. it would pull whatever we could put behind it on the mountain.

because of this, to this day i am a sucker for any locomotives painted for the erie.

[mf5117]

Lionel post war 1964 set . This included

12710
Five Car
Freight Set
1964 - 1966

739 Berkshire Locomotive
736W Whistling Tender
6162 New York Central Gondola
6414 Automobile Loader
6464-725 New Haven Box Car
6476 Lehigh Valley Hopper
6437 Pennsylvania Caboose
Plus: O gauge track, UCS remote control track, LW transformer, billboards, smoke pellets and instructions

My father was over seas at the time . And my family lived on an Air Force Base in Maine . My mum set it up on the wood floor in my bedroom . I liked running it at night watching the head light and smoke . I remember the guff she went threw to get me more smoke pellets .  I believe some of it is still in their attic along with a bunch of TYCO stuff ...

[jonathan]

1971.  I was 10 years old.

4 piece AHM freight set; 0-4-0 Dockside with a few cars.  Also got some kind of 4-wheel plymouth, never ran well.  AND a Rivarrossi 0-6-0 tanker.  The tanker still runs and runs and runs.  Got a circle of track and I ran the heck out of those trains under the dining room table.  

The next summer I inherited my grandfather's HO trains.  He switch to N before he passed.

He had a Varney 0-4-0, B&O.   Guess which railroad I model 42 years later...



Regards,

Jonathan

[john tricarico]

first set was a lionel 44 tonner set in 1958

[AndyJB]

Trix Twin passenger set around 1960, it never really grew as they turned belly up not long after.

[jward]

1971.  I was 10 years old.

4 piece AHM freight set; 0-4-0 Dockside with a few cars.  Also got some kind of 4-wheel plymouth, never ran well.  AND a Rivarrossi 0-6-0 tanker.  The tanker still runs and runs and runs.  Got a circle of track and I ran the heck out of those trains under the dining room table.  

The next summer I inherited my grandfather's HO trains.  He switch to N before he passed.

He had a Varney 0-4-0, B&O.   Guess which railroad I model 42 years later...



Regards,

Jonathan

jonathon,

interesting that your love for b&o stemmed from a docksider. mine stems from growing up less than a mile from the mainline. B&O was a friendly road, and i spent countless hours in the signal towers helping the operators throw switches, occasionally hooping up train orders, etc. they were happy for the company on a lonely job.

the other big line in the area, pennsy/ pc/ conrail, ran far more trains, but took a dim view of railfans.

[Desertdweller]

Dave,

I think your satellite train is really cool!  I would have loved something like that when I was a kid.

Johnathan,

You were a lucky guy to get your grandfather's HO trains.  Generally, the trains get bigger as the owner gets older (so they can still see them).

When I worked in HO, I had an AHM Docksider.  Yours looks like it had a number of improvements added.  It looks like it sits a little lower than mine did.  I like the chain added to the cylinder, the red window frame, and the figure in the cab.  Looks like your grandfather had a fine eye for detail.



My first train was a Lionel set I got for Christmas in 1953.  I was four years old.  It had a die-cast 2-6-4 loco.  I received more cars as presents in following years, so I don't remember what it had originally, but I remember it had a lighted caboose, a Sunoco tank car, two gondola cars, and a flat car with a boat.  I also got a Western Pacific boxcar sometime later.

The O-27 track was set up on a braced Masonite 4x8 sheet.  I had a stamped steel through truss bridge (mounted flat on the Masonite), a remote-control uncoupling track, and a road crossing with flashing signal and a shack with a little man that came out and waved a lantern.

I always thought the bridge over nothing was unrealistic until I worked for the DM&E RR.  We had a bridge over the Bad River in South Dakota that was located where the river was re-channeled.  The new channel passed under the railroad via culverts, while the old channel was filled in without the bridge being removed.  Thus the bridge remained on what was now flat ground.  Life imitates art!

Les

[richg]

Lionel, 0-27, 2-6-2 with smoke and horn in the tender. A white pill about the size of an aspirin as I recall was dropped into the smoke stack. A wire coil in the bottom of the smoke box heated the tablet.
A log car that flips the logs off. Operating milk cat where the worker would push the milk cans onto a platform. A searchlight on a flatcar. Two dome tank car and caboose. Long gone.

I now have some 0-27 Marx that are very noisy when running. Tin plate.

Rich.

[Doneldon]

My first trains were a Lionel set which was really my brother's from just after World War Two. I can't remember not having it. We acquired a Lionel Magna-Traction diesel of some kind in the mid-fifties (my brother might have liberated it, I never knew for sure). That thing would pull the family Buick if we needed it to.

We switched to HO in 1959 with two Athearn sets, one led by an AT&SF GP-9, the other an AT&SF passenger F unit. We soon acquired two Athearn RDCs (one powered) and many more pieces of rolling stock made from Athearn kits. Within a year or so we had graduated to Walthers wood and steel heavyweight passenger car kits, LaBelle wooden kits, Model Die Casting all zinc casting kits, Penn-Line plastic passenger kits, and Tru-Scale wooden kits. We also built some Central Valley kits (my favorite) but they were more expensive due to the included high-quality trucks. Our first three locos, counting the RDC, were all Hi-F drive, known disparagingly as rubber band drive. Then we shifted almost completely to steam with Varney, Model Die Casting and Mantua locos and loco kits. We began switching to Kadee couplers after just a few months hoping the NMRA-approved X2f horn-hooks would work as well as the NMRA endorsement seemed to promise. For structures we free-lanced/scratch built when we could or built Revell kits and then Suydamm kits.

Talk about a trip down Memory Lane. Wow!

                                                                        -- D

[jbrock27]

I was 5 and for Christmas got an AHM set that contained a Pennsy Alco RS 2 or 3 (at the time I did not know or care-was just excited to get a train set!) And the following cars: The red white and blue Bangor/Maine box car, a yellow cattle car, a Pennsy cabose and Rhode Island or Rock Island gondola. At first it was a figure 8 on a piece of Masonite.  My father also gave me use of a couple of Gilbert cars: a B & 0 box car, Gulf tanker and black B & 0 gondola.  He also gave me a B & 0 steamer that had a tender attached.  No idea what kind of steamer or maker, although my dad seems to think it was a Mantua.  The cattle car never seemed to track well and it always seemed to be much "higher" than the other cars.  When I was between 8 and 10, I grew to hate the Alco, bc it could not pull squat, even on a level surface.  It and the steamer died (too many moving parts on the steamer for a young fella).  They got replaced with an Athearn Blue Box Chesapeake and Ohio F7 "super weight"  which I still have today, after recently replacing a truck (the kind with the metal side plates) and doing everything short of the Pearl Drops on the Athearn "update" routine. The F7 is a "beast" and can pull a ton of cars. 
I still have the Bangor/Maine, all the other AHM cars took headers off the 4 x 8 particle board the layout was later on when we moved to the suburbs.  I do still have some parts from them.  The Gilbert gondola disappeared as well but I recently put Kadees on the Gilbert B & O and Gulf Tanker.  They still have springs on their trucks.  Over time, I also came by my father's Atlas snap switches and other Atlas track to supplement the AHM track.  Brass of course, but stil in use today, with my son.   In fact, some of the switches lasted until just recently.  They came apart bc the plastic was breaking down.  I also just recently replaced the transformer he gave me to use, a big green thing, made in W. Germany that had forward and reverse controlled by a single dial.  12:00 position was off and to the left and right were forward and reverse.  It was still working; just not as efficient as more modern transformers.  Don't know what ever happened to the AHM transformer that came with the set I got for that Christmas.

[RAM]

My first train set was a clock works set by Marx.  My guess would be in 1937.

[utdave]

Did we become kids again. bring back some fun times.    and how many different types of trains.    i know when i was playing with mine  i had more friends want to come to my place.  i was  the only one in our neighborhood who had one except one friend   who could never keep his running and forgot what brand  but went over to hes house one day to hook up the wire  that broke.     made me proud i could fix it   used my dads rapid strippers i was abount 9 or 10.           i was hoping one day Bachmann could make a radar and light car   DCC    and even maybe a blower car  with dcc   maybe even a spring loaded nerf rocket launcher dcc  so i can shoot my godzilla from attacking my train yard.        Dave

[Woody Elmore]

Once, at the big Timonium show in Maryland, there was an exhbitor who made kits for the big railway guns. One of those would certainly keep Godzilla at bay (not sure about Mothra.)

My love of trains started in my godfather's basement. His dad was a PRR employee so the heavy power was provided by Lionel GG-1s. I remember his set of Madison passenger cars being pulled by a GG-1 - the lights flickered as the train ran around the layout. A Pennsy turbine locomotive often drew freight duty.
The track was all handlaid outside third rail on Midlin roadbed

My first set of trains were Lionel. I had a friend who had American Flyers. I always though that their trains suffered because of the tremendously big couplers - either the hook or the knuckle type. Of Course the Lionel coupler was also huge!

[jward]

my grandfather had some midlin track. i liked it. it was a easy way to lay your own track. the rail had a flange on the bottom which fit into slots cut in wood ties. instant handlaid track, perfectly in guage.

one wonders where such ingenuity, so common in this hobby in the past, is to-day,