First Train You Bought

I was 7 or 8 and purchased this Lionel New Englander with money saved...

Jerry,

   Because I was given my Fathers & Grandfathers O Gauge Trains I had no reason to purchase one, until Williams came out with the Big Yellow & Gray UP City of San Francisco Passenger Train, I had to have it and had a True Blast Horn installed in it after many years of ownership, I still own her today, runs like silk via the TR DCS mode. 

PCRR/Dave

My big Williams Yellow and Gray UP City of San Fran on display at the Iron Horse way back, when it 1st came out.

1954 Lakawana Trainmaster 2321 with Maroon Roof at after Christmas sale at the Emporium San Francisco,it was quite exciting.

Mikey

I think the first car was either the lionel favorite spirit series Sambuca reefer, because it jut looked cool, or the Naperville junction boxcar.

I know my first engine was the lionel WM PA set, nearly $100, with money earned shoveling snow.  I was fairly young and in boy scouts at the time so I am guessing I was about 13or 14 at the time.  Yes I still have them.  Sadly no the haven't run in a while.  However the would take quite a load.  I eventually collected all twelve of the favorite spirits cars and ran them plus a caboose and maybe a few more cars at my local club track.

Aw geez, I don't remember. I know it would have been HO and probably Tyco. Not positive if it was the first thing I bought, but one of my earliest purchases was a Tyco Midnight Special Baldwin Shark.

I like the looks of the Baldwin Sharks. Does anybody know if an O-27 Baldwin Shark was ever made? I wonder if I could give a Mark tin diesel a shark-like nose job!   lol

My father and grandfather put together a Lionel layout on a 4x8 table as a Christmas present for me when I was 2 years old.  I was so young and didn't really play with it.  I forgot about it and received it for Christmas the following year.  By then I was old enough to play with the trains.  When I got older my mother told me that the first year, she thinks the trains were really a present for my father and grandfather. 

I kept those trains until my teen-age years when I sold them to buy a Gibson EB-3 bass guitar. 

I had no further involvement with model trains until 1983 when my wife (who was pregnant with our first child) talked about her fond memories of having a train running under the Christmas tree when she was a child.  That was enough to get me to a train store where I bought a transformer, track, and the Chicago & Alton engine and passenger cars.  We've had a train (sometimes O gauge and sometimes G gauge) under the tree ever since.

The first train I bought myself was my 675.Been one of my best runners for over twenty years.

25 years ago I bought a terrific 2353 SF AA pair and four LIONEL LINES aluminum passenger cars as a 40th b'day gift for my brother.  The following year I gave him the baggage car.  I sure do miss that set.

A Pola-Maxi O scale steam freight set while living in Germany, and I still have it on display.

The first Lionel I bought when I got back to the States was a Wabash 2240 A-B set.  I already had one of these which I received at the age of six.  Liked so much I got another.  I still have both of those sets too.

My first attempt was a childhood birthday cash one. A box cab critter, and was "the one that got away". I got a large GI Joe Jeep and HQ from another store.. I showed um) .....(oh great now I want to shop for PW box cabs)

  I may have bought a piece of rolling stock or two, but I think it would have been "pick one out" by me. Always an earned event, but not truly cash in hand yet. I had a 5-gift engine +stock, for a head start that sated me for about 20 years. Then while walking the LHS, hunting 80s re-pops of hot rod model car kits, I spotted this, a favorite car, and favorite cartoon together. (nice camera huh?)   

It had a buddy! And others on the way! Very funny I bought them on the spot about $25-35 bucks each, told them I wanted them all as they arrived 

,

I offered to pre-pay, but I was spending cash there often, and for a long while. So I waited on the others, when the Speedy car & Pepe(?) arrived they called me at work and I stopped on the way home, and looked at them, and went 3 miles home for the cash. Upon my return, the "crew" vs boss, had sold them thinking they were regular stock. "Yea that's the ticket"..nope...a year later I found out the guy behind me offered the boss extra dough . (Out o'biz now). So they became fun shelf queens for many years, until.....  

The first locomotive I paid cash for was only about 5 years ago. I saw a CL GG-1 ad, while looking for an electric motor to go in an air compressor. I wanted a Brunswick one bad so called.

A Tuscan, 1-motor MPC but "very pretty"... "I've got a Little Joe too!"....Well when I got there, he showed me two more GG-1s, a Tuscan K-line, and Williams dummy too. He would only let 1 Lionel electric go! I had to choose, and none were Brunswick. Then he says "Ive got these going up tonight" and pulls out the K-line Tuscan "Fleet of Modernism cars" No more choosing Lionel GG, K-line GG, Williams dummy, Fleet of Modernism too. About $200. I love the semi-scale pretty red rocket I have now Hey..PRR is funny as #2, too. (Hey Beavis, he typed #2 and didn't spell it. That's crappy..also)..ok shad up, shuddin up

bang bang bang bang  4 hits

First loco that I bought was the Minuteman Vulcan switcher that Madison Hardware had on sale for $6.00. I remember the price because I had to mow 3 lawns at $2.00 a pop to get the money to order that little guy. Still have it after 50 years or so and it still runs.

Mine was a 681 about 10 years ago. I remember I saw it on ebay for $49.99 without a tender. The tender and freight cars were each in their own auction, each for $49.99. I bought the engine, but decided to look elsewhere for a tender for it. The next week, I noticed that the seller listed all the cars and the tender for $15 each (since they obviously didn't sell at that price), and I bought the tender.

Both items arrived well, and after sitting in an attic since the early 70's (according to the seller), I put it on the track and it ran like a champ! To this day, she's still my railroad's tank!

The very first train I bought myself was a Lionel 2018 which replaced the 1011 Scout I burned up. It was 1956, I had dropped out of college to work so I had some $$.  When I was drafted in 1957 I gave all my Lionel stuff to my sister and her husband for their  boys.  About  15 years ago I got it back-worn out. When I got back in to O gauge about 2 1/2  tears ago I had it rebuilt. Runs good. My first purchase when I got back to post war O gauge was a 726RRBerkshire with some cars and a ZW transformer. Have been quite a few since then, too.

First one I actually bought was way back in 2005.  Walked into The Hobby Shop in Aberdeen, NJ to buy a slot car set.  Walked out with a Railking PRR Passenger starter set.

Never did get that slot car set.

The very first Train Master from Lionel back in the 50's with paper route money. Loved that engine and still do.

With my lawn cutting money at age 14, I bought the Lionel 18000 B-6 switcher off of the Bay. I still have it, and I still love it, despite being 26 years old.

After Christmas a few years back: An SP&S Docksider and caboose pair on ebay.

Still have it, it's a cute little engine and runs well.

Hard to remember.  I'm only 24, but tough to recall when I stopped picking them out and dad paid for them and I actually made my own purchases.  I can imagine that I may have paid for a few HO freight cars.  I do recall at a local "show" (maybe 7 or 8 layouts set up in a church hall) I displayed at, one of the guys sold me a minuteman missle launching boxcar with a repaired roof for short money.  My first large purchase I can tell you was an ebay find when I was probably 15 or 16.  I had always wanted a Lionel Postwar Santa Fe F3 (coincidentally my fist HO engine).  Found the early AB version with some 2500 series cars (baggage, silver cloud pullman, vista dome, and PRR observation).  Think I got it for $150 (newspaper sales money).  The cars probably had been sitting on a shelf in a basement for years because one side of each of them was filthy, some were practically black.  They all cleaned up with little effort.  I ended up selling the PRR observation and only recently picked up a Silver Dawn observation (needs some TLC).  Keeping my eye out for the Silver Bluff and eventually I'll replace the engine with one of the dual motor versions that it can actually handle all the cars!

I inherited a couple of sets from my Dad and Grandfather which I contented myself with for many years mainly due to financial reasons. Finally in early 1976 I finally broke open my wallet and sprung for a die cast Lionel 8204 Pacific with the MIGHTY SOUND OF STEAM, electronic whistle and smoke.  It came with a 2 position E-Unit.  I bought it a hobby shop called Bill's Trains in Turnersville, N.J. which didn't survive the 70s.  It cost me $43.33.  I still have the engine in its original box with the price tax affixed to it. Over the years it took quite a beating but amazingly enough the engine still runs with all functions operating.   Who said MPC stuff stinks?  Its been all downhill ever since.   

The first train I bought was an HO Pemko GG1, DGLE, road number 4828 when I was 13.  I saved milk money for almost an entire school year to pay for it's original $19.99 price in 1982.  I still have it in my extensive collection of GG1s.

It ran reasonably well for it's time even if it did run at two speeds, 0 smph and Lionel smph.

The first train I bought was an HO Tyco Penn Central F7 set for $19.99 in 1969.  I saved 80 quarters to get it.  Yes, I had some extra for Pennsylvania sales tax.  ;-)

I've owned trains ever since.  

A few years after I had received my Marx #999 freight set for Christmas, I was down

in the basement Woolworth's toy dept. with gift money from Christmas or birthday?

and spied a Marx #21 A-A for sale in the box.  These were big tin diesels, that were

too big for 0-27, but I ran them for a while, after moving structures away from the

curves.  I never liked them and eventually cut them in two and made a double ended

diesel, like the CNJ Baldwin?, that I painted bright blue.  I still have it, and, it being

Marx, probably still runs.  I still avoid #21 sets.

When I was about four years old I got a Marx tin-plate set for Christmas, long since gone. About ten to twelve years ago a lady brought the same set into my shop and I bought it from her immediately just for the nostalgia and began to hoard 0 gauge since then.

Lessee, now -- the first one I bought with my own money would be an Athearn HO F-unit in New Haven colors.  The locomotive had the infamous rubber-band drive, and the lesson it eventually taught me was to always buy only gear-driven locomotives.  Seemed like pretty sophisticated stuff when I was twelve, though.

An Athearn HO freight set was my first, bought used from a friend of a friend.  I preferred Athearn at the time for the rubber band  drive engines. They seemed smoother (at speed but not startup) than the gear drives of the time, and certainly quieter.  Of course, I was comparing them to friends' locos, and they surely didn't have top-end ones at the ages of 13-14.

For me it was the summer of  '59.

Athearn HO (rubber band drive) Hustler. $5.95 from Windsor Hobby Shop in Berwyn, Illinois.

Mid-90's, I was collecting diecast cars and building some model kits, just dabbling in hobbies to keep me home and out of trouble. I got to thinking it would be cool to have a train running around our Christmas tree, though I knew little about trains. Got a catalog from Matchbox Collectibles, and sure enough, there was a train in it. It was an HO set by Mantua, with a GP20, a few cars and a caboose, all with "Matchbox Railroad" for a road name. The star of the set is a flat car, with special edition Matchbox cars on it. That started the whole dang thing.

This one...

Lionel MPC 8370 F3 ABA plus the passenger cars.  It was the mid 1990s and the set was NIB.  I happened to have gotten my first real job -- that was the reason for my celebratory expenditure.

I can't be sure, but I believe it was the Lionel aluminum passenger car, Silver Bluff, 2534.

I remember getting three of the cars for Christmas...Silver Dawn, Silver Range, Silver Cloud.  Silver Bluff was a sister car to Silver Cloud, a coach/Pullman.  I suppose I agitated over not having all four of the aluminum passenger cars.  I can also surmise that Dad would've said something like 'Save your own money for it!'  Now, I do recall that the price was a princely (at that time, of course!!) sum of $9.95.  Nonetheless it would've changed the whole perspective of chores, allowance, saving, etc..

Suffice it to say, I remember going to Superior Lock and Electric in my then hometown of Washington, D.C., and cleaning out my 'wallet' (dufus as it was!) for the Silver Bluff transaction. 

My memory is much clearer on HO (what was I thinking....right?) purchases I made later on in my young life.  The Mantua Mikado kit....what a teachable moment that turned out to be!!!

I am always pleased and very complimentary/congratulatory when a youngster comes to our store (LHS) with their parent(s) and shells out their own money for most...if not all...of a purchase they've been saving for.  If I'm on register duty, I make sure they feel proud about their purchase.  It's becoming more and more rare an occurrence, however, as one might expect in this day and age

FWIW...

KD.

The first train I bought with my own money was 1960 when I purchased a Lionel 225 C&O Alco FA and an aluminum Lionel Lines observation car with money I received for Christmas from my aunts. I was 12 at the time.

My first train set was 1952 from Santa: Marx tinplate 027 diesel freight set. My first Lionel was for Christmas in 1955 -- 665 Steam freight set.

I bought a 2332 GG1 from a dealer in 1973. He co-signed a 6 month loan for me and that is how I started to establish credit.

Pete

AHM 0-4-0 Pennsy A-class shifter  slope-back tender.  I painted and detailed it for my then-current dream pike.  Still have it, still runs.

Not too many years later, I got smart and shifted back to O 'cause the HO dream layout became a nightmare. 

Mine was the Pacific kit, lots of fun riveting that valve gear together!

Jerry

The first Lionel train item I bought myself with my own money was the original Derrick Platform Set from Korvettes. All my previous trains had been gifts. I sold it when I sold my trains to pay for grad school  but I bought the reissue when I got back into O gauge. Many deride this accessory, but I loved it as a kid-and no wires to hook up!

Mine were purchased together from the same vendor at the first train show I ever attended in March of 1976. (I was 13 at the time) 

The diesels were 4.00 and the Pacific was 14.00 I remember because it was 2.00 to get in and I only had 20.00.

i was 12 years old when i made my first lionel purchase - an engine - a 2-6-2 with smoke - the was to be my second engine - i WANTED smoke - i sold the "grit" a weekly paper - went to the local hardware store and bought the engine on credit - when i paid 1/2 i could take it home - total price around $15.00 - i think, not sure - this was about 1954 - it worked - paid 1/2, got the engine - and paid my bill in weekly installments - i think this is called "high finance" - many years later i discovered my grandfather had paid for the engine in the beginning - and was teaching me a lesson about credit - hey, a good engine and a better granddad

we could use some Grandads like that nowadays.