At what age did you receive your first electric train?

5

15

55

 

It was a Marx.  I was 6. Christmas of '63.

5-13-39 (sounds like a lock combination).

 

My first set was the Santa Fe F3's 2353 freight set from the 1954 catalog, and I was running it just this morning. It is always on the layout.

Forgot to post my own experience:

 

Received an American Flyer PRR K5 No 310 for Christmas of 1949 at age 5 1/2.

Switched to HO at 12 or 13 and traded all my Gilbert stuff off for an electric guitar in 1961.

Came back twice - when I had a hobby shop in 1989 for 5 or 6 years and then again just 4 years ago.

In 1954...when I was born...my maternal grandfather gave my dad a brand new Lionel Hudson locomotive, some individually bought freight cars, caboose, transformer and track.  He told my dad that they were for his first grandson when he got old enough to play with them!  Matt

5

13

63

0

15

60

 

The zero is because my dad brought a set home when I was born, and he and the family Dr. (they made house calls then!) played with it under my crib.  The 60 is when my first grandchild was born, and I brought out the old equipment made a little loop for Christmas, which has been growing ever since...

   Bob A.

2

14

30

5

16

34

Lionel 682 Turbine at age 3

At eight, in 1954.

sometime around 1960 at 14

Picked up again in 2006 at age 60

2.5, in 1993, with a Lionel UP Steam Freight Set

 

And here I am, at age 22, and I still have not left.

I was 3 in 1951, when Santa brought me my Lionel 2026 set for Christmas.  I still have it, and it looks and runs as well as ever.

 

I never really lost interest in model railroading, though I did get sidetracked into HO, N and S along the way.  I certainly never saw an interest in girls to be mutually exclusive with trains, but getting married and moving to a city definitely siphoned off both time and money for hobbies for a few years.  I was 20 at the time.  I guess I must have been about 25 or 26 before I could actively pursue my interest in miniature trains again.

 

Now that my wife and I are retired, I finally have time to pursue my hobbies (though I could wish for more room).  I'm mainly back in Lionel, though I'm not averse to a bit of 2-rail O scale modeling now and then.

4

14

20

 

First set was an HO Union Pacific GP9.  I went downstairs on Christmas morning to find a fully detailed 4x8 layout.  I've tinkered with N, HO, and O throughout the years.   I still have a considerable amount of N scale trains, but they are boxed up.

Never had one as a child. To Expensive.

First train around age 45 after reading a Smithsonian article about electric toy trains and l where Lionel was mentioned.  

1956-11

        24

        59

1959 photo 14 years old

6  lionel tin plate passenger train that my dad had, then a postwar 4-4-2 lionel lines freight set - kept adding accessories til......

 

17  discovered college, women, UK basketball, and working to pay the bills (not necessarily in that order), then......

 

58  realized  being retired finally afforded me the time to revisit my interest in o-gauge trains, visited a few LHS and I was hooked (re-hooked) and have been building my railroad empire ever since.

 

steam rules

 

"a country boy can survive!"   Bocephus, 1981

Ist train? At 50, and I bought it for myself.

FrankM

At about age 6 or 7 I had some inexpensive HO, but being too young, most broke quick....it wasn't until age 8 I got into O gauge with an MTH starter set in 2002 (which I still have), but then my electric train playing hiatus began not long after and ended at age 13 with a Lionel 1989 B-6 Switcher and a sudden surge of O gauge purchasing began~

Christmas, 1947,  I was 4 years old. A Lionel set Santa Clause brought me.

 

Returned to my trains, which I had kept through many moves, Christmas, 1973, when my children were young. I was 30.  Been in them ever since, now 70.

 

Still have that first set. 

11,

15,

35.

6

12

25

Christmas 1946, I was two years old. A American Flyer three rail set. I must have been made before the war. The cars were really S gauge size. Don't remember getting it. As my Mom told me many times, my Dad and his pal ran it tell the transformer stopped working. It never ran again. I do remember the white box car and red caboose. I played with those for a couple years. The train I do remember and still have was a Lionel 2026 freight set. I got it in 1948. Loved it. Ran it all the time on the floor. My trains expanded every birthday and Christmas. A pair of 027 switches, a KW transformer, log car, more track. Finally a 1615 steam switcher. Don

7

10

30

 

Age 7  received my first Lionel Starter Set.

Age 19 left for college. 

Age 27Moved into my own house and reclaimed my the trains I grew up with at my    parents house and started to add to my collection. 

received my marx train set in 1950 when i was 6yrs old.

dont know what happened to it but i do know it was that train set that lit the fire for my involvment in trains.

 

i just cant imagine life without toy trains.

 

terry........

I was 8 years old when I bought my first train set.  Bought it with money received for my First Communion.  It was a The New Englander set by Lionel.  Still have it.

My interest in trains faded when I was around 13-14.

I returned to the I gauge hobby in 2005.

Received the Lionel 1469WS set for Christmas '49 from Mom & Dad. I was 11 months old. I still have it and unpacked it for Christmas 2011 for our first grandson. Oiled/lubed it and it ran as well as it did when it was packed up 50 years ago.

At one-year & seven-months and I still have that engine, Lionel 2025.  The next one at Christmas one-year later, Lionel Electronic set.

49 - My wife bought me my first train to run around the Christmas tree. She had no idea it would turn into an obsession. At age 58, I'm still hooked, and she doesn't mind one bit.

12-25-49.

 

Age 5.

 

Lionel Scout

 

 

That one was mine.  Until then, and for a few years more, Dad's 366W going round and round and round the Christmas tree was part of the Christmas magic at our house.  He received that gem in 1935...when he was a 'kid' of 27.  I still have it.

I think I've posted this before....and I see the 1946-47 timeframe is popular, and it

was one of those holidays when a Marx #25000 set with the spoked driver #999 with

the semi-perforated pilot, the Pa. box, B&O gon, and NIAC tank with Reading caboose

appeared under the tree. Track was nailed to a large sheet of cream painted plywood, that my grandfather had built with one inch stripwood all around the border.  The loop was larger than the box standard so he must have bought extra track.  I must have been 7 or 8.  I went into HO at maybe 15 and stayed in that with varying intensity,

with a car hobby many years, just buying car kits of appealing road names, until a major Flyer collector I worked with mentioned there was a Greenberg Marx book.  This in the early 1980's and I tracked down a copy, guested at York in 1985, and was corrupted.

2

16

30

 

Which if added equals 48 which is the year mom and dad gave me a LIONEL™ 2026 freight set.  Cue Twilight Zone theme.

3 or 4

12

45

 

- Mike

10, 14 and 23- running trains on occasion is the only way I survived medical school.

My brother got the 2026 freight set in '48, I got the 2065 In '52 when I was 3.  At least that's what my Mother told me...  We ran the sets every Christmas until I was 14.  My parents broke up the trains and split them between the three boys in 1979 when I was 30.  Told us it was time for their grandchildren to enjoy them.  I set them up at Christmas until 1988 for my children.  Then my Daughter told me it was time to set them up for in 2007 for my grandchildren and I haven't put them away since.

 

So the age dates are:

3 started 14 quit

30 started 39 quit 

58 started and still going strong

1 year old received a Marx Train set and never.

Age 4 - my father took out his 1930s wind up Marx set.  I got a Marx electric set for Christmas that year.

 

I never lost interest in toy trains but left my layout, trains and modeling table with my parents when I went off to college.  However a protracted period of diapers, PTA meetings, school ball games, and paying for college interrupted my ability to both have a layout or buy much in the way of toy trains. I was about 55 before I could jump back in. 

7

12

55