What is your 1st Childhood Memory that got you started with Trains?

When I was three years old my Dad visited a guy living in the basement apartment who had a lot of Lionel running all over the place.  That visit got me interested.  I can still see it when I close my eyes ....

Christmas 1960. I was 3 and received a (used) 1954 vintage American Flyer. It is a Santa Fe PA-B w/ 3 aluminum passenger cars. Still have it and it still runs.

Gilly

Like Russell, we generally got one rather "big" Christmas gift, the rest were trinkets and spring school clothes. One year I remember getting my first train, a Lionel 627 Lehigh Valley Center Cab Switcher for Christmas and extra track with a trestle set for my birthday the following March. Not having room for a real layout, my big thing was making it climb as steep as I could, including as high as the bed. Unfortunately, that resulted in a lot of falls, but that thing was indestructible

Eventually we moved and I lost interest in the train as I entered my high school years. When I returned from Vietnam years later, I looked for that old engine to rekindle my interest. Alas, it fell victim to basement moisture and was discarded by my parents that very year. So, I bought some HO and N gauge trains and started anew.

Being military, I couldn't see investing in a full layout, so I fashioned a staggered dual-layer setup using two 4x8 sheets of plywood. The whole thing was mounted on wires above the car in the garage in central California (Travis AFB). I was able to raise and lower it, the HO train using both levels while the N train was relegated to the lower level only. I never got to the landscaping stage, but I sure had fun with some very intricate track designs.

That's when I knew someday I'd have a multilevel layout where trains could traverse each level in either direction, etc. Just like our road trips in the van take different routes to/from the same destinations, I enjoy flipping switches so trains go on different routes willy-nilly. I may outgrow that someday, so my latest design does include some space for landscaping, sidings, etc., but I think I will always enjoy watching trains go through a myriad of tracks without a care in the world.

I am the son of a toy train collector, the late Paul Bidonde, and I cut my teeth on #1, #2, Standard and OO gauge trains. Every year at Christmas, my father put a loop of track around the perimeter of our living room, with a siding in front of the fireplace. Behind the Christmas tree sat a  big Lionel tinplate mountain. We ran Lionel, Ives, Dorfan, Boucher, Voltamp, Bing, American Flyer, Marklin, Erector, and others I have forgotten.

I have memories of lying in bed at night and listening to the G5s and K4s steam engines roaring through the Tulip Avenue crossing in Floral Park with eastbound express commuter trains.

Every holiday season we'd make a couple trips into Roxbury to visit Nana and Pa. Pa Ben had a nice s-guege layout he'd set up every Christmas with a village of those little cardboard houses with the cellophane windows glowing with the big old Christmas lights in them. I still remember the silver steamer pulling two passenger cars.....got to get one of those and add an s loop tot he new layout.

Tim

My Dad and I bought a bunch of Mighty Casey items back in the early '90s.Engines,freight cars,passenger cars,and track.I will post photos of the set up this weekend.There are a lot of Mighty Casey items for sale on Ebay under"Remco Mighty Casey".

Dan 

My father took me to the circus in New York when I was five (I'm 62 now).

We took the then-Pennsylvania Railroad MP-54 commuter train from Iselin,

N.J.  I remember more of that wonderful ride than anything else that day!

     Hoppy

My Dad flying the remote control plane he and Mom bought me for Christmas. It was controlled via a handle with something like fishing line? He took it in a circle about 5-6 time til a line snapped and it went straight into the ground. (I had yet to fly it) We picked up the pieces and went home. In the car he said, stick with the trains.

Last time I ever saw that plane! 

Earliest?  Probably the NW2's and clanking couplers at the nearby SP yard, interspersed with the rumble of M41's being shuttled on the neighboring Army base, as I shuddered under the covers of my toddler bed until my father came to explain the noises weren't monsters coming to get me. 

What, me worry? 

I always liked trains. I remember walking accross the bridge on 62end street that the PAA NE corridor ran under when I was little. I would drive my father nuts as I counted every car in the line up.

But, I was really hooked by a little Lionel film called the Wonderful World of Trains.

After I saw that little film it was all over but the payout of some cash for my Dad.

Great story Jeff, I had a Ring Master that I built over a summer when I was eleven or so. The same thing happened to it but it flew into the side of a RR switch tower.

My Dad helped me build my first platform that Christmas

I got a control-line model plane for Christmas, too.  It must have been around 1960, when I was twelve.  It was pretty slick: a Douglas Dauntless, with an actual dropping bomb that was released by a separate cord.  Power was a Wen-Mac .049 engine.  No sissy electric motors for flying model planes in those days!

I actually got pretty good at flying it, and had a lot of fun.  Dad would drive me down to an open field near the river, where I could fly without running into anything or driving the neighbors batty (model plane gas engines, for those who've never been near one, are noisy).

My days in aerial combat, though, were numbered.  One morning, as I was standing there turning in a circle to put the Dauntless through its maneuvers, a stiff gust of northerly wind got under its wings.  The control lines went slack, and, out of my control altogether, it went into dive-bombing mode for real -- directly at me.

There was no time to make a run for it (the control lines were only about twenty feet long).  Instinctively, I hit the dirt.  According to witnesses who reported afterward, the Dauntless made its power dive and zoomed by, just inches over my head, which was pressed firmly into the grass.

It bounced once, and nosed into the ground about ten feet from me, stalling the engine but coming to rest on its wheels.

I gradually lost interest in control-line planes after that.  The plane lives on in my mother's attic, but it was pretty much the end of my aviation career.

I was a early morning paper boy in Everett Washington and would look at a Varney HO Little Joe in a hobby shop window. I was about 12 and had a Marx set earlier but that Varney memory stands out.

My grand parent's farm at Tunnel NY was surrounded by the D&H (top of Belden Hill).  When we visited my dad and I would walk up to the tracks. This picture was taken by my dad in 1938.

When I was 5 or 6 my dad set up an American Flyer under the Christmas tree with a crossing gate.   I was hooked from the moment I saw it.   My favorite part of the holidays was when it was time to set up the train under the tree!  It all snowballed from there.  

---Greg

These moments...

FrankM

Christmas 1977. This was the moment that started it all.

My Dad's S gauge American Flyer set which was a gift from my Uncle. It ran only on Christmas.

Sadly, my brother has it now and it sits unused and unopened in his basement for years and years. I would put it on display at least but it is a delicate family matter.

For me it was growing up alongside the Boston & Maine's Bedford Branch in Arlington, MA.

The bug hit hard on Christmas 1961. Under the tree I found a 1055 Texas Special set with a @3370 Sheriff & Outlaw car

Here is a snap shot of me if you between the tree and the chair the train is at the base of the tree.

It really was the best of times!

I think I just liked trains from birth. I remember trains decorating my room as young child. I had Fisher-Price floor train and I remember the coolest plastic trainset. It was sort of like Brio, but plastic with snap together couplers. It had switches, a cross over, and even a turntable. 

I was a train nut long before age 12or so when I got my first electric train, a Tyco bicentennial set, for Christmas of'76.

I'm not sure if it was my obsession with the nearby former PRR Main Line in Paoli, my neighbor's LGB trains, or my Dad's tinplate set that made them do it, but in the Christmas of 1980 my parents finally bought me my own train, an LGB starter set and add on cars from the Wannamaker's Department Store in Philadelphia. Some of my earliest memories are of these trains, although I don't have any specific memories until the next Christmas, when I was 3.75 years old.  Over time both our O gauge and LGB collections grew, thanks in no small part to the TCA and its members.  I must have been a good boy, as both the LGB set and my Dad's tinplate, both of which I played with as early as the age of two survived with hardly a scratch.   

OMG, Glenn! Look at the curiosity and the joy on that li'l face! What more is there to say about our wonderful hobby?!

Grandpa collected Lionels, I received my Adriatic, Super O track, and a KW at birth. I don't remember not being around Lionel trains. When Gramps took my 2037 and KW back for cleaning at Christmas when I was 3 or 4, I got new 0-27 track, with un-coupler tracks, and #90s with green "L" buttons, an LW transformer, four 1122 turnouts, a 45d crossover, a large pressed paper curved tunnel, and a powered army missile launcher set. I destroyed the engine by Febuary when my 2037 was to be returned to me. Gramps was PO'ed about the army loco, and threatened to keep the Adriatic, and the "present" he had with it. It was all night I pleaded, and reasoned with him that I did love my trains. I didn't even want what was in the box, I begged him for my old train back, and to teach me to lube, and "fix it and stuff", and promised to clean, and lube them, and play "Gomez Addams" with my trains in a gentler fashion, and only with "the junk", if he would only give me another chance.

He reluctantly went for it, but inspected my now crap trains and "new" 249(the new gift) for more damage for months before he left the 2037 in my care again the next Christmas. Its maintenance? Mostly, I kept my word. The "Little Gomez" in me occasionally won out, magnetraction only helps so much, so its paint is rather scarred.  But the Adriatic is still mechanically clean, oiled, running fast, and pulling angrily. My favorite loco. The 249 stayed nice, and I traded him for a scout, and some operating cars, years later when he wanted a 249 again. I then partial traded that to him so by little brother would get a metal 665 instead of a switcher Gramps had planed for him. The lessons learned, the sacrifices, and trades, it also bought me enough respect with him over time, that when visiting him, I got to handle and run many of the trains my older cousins weren't allowed to touch. Much later, I even got trusted with the "black" GG1 once, the only time I ever saw it run.

 I wonder what my last memory of my trains will be?

I was 4 in 1978 my dad got me a lionel 442 chesepeake flyer whistle house N&W caboose cars did a6x6 under the tree and we used his kw from when he was a kid  we still have it and his commodore vanderbilt prewar  then layouts in basement for 14 years best times with my dad and I learned carpentry electrical before high school

Great stories everyone!  Mine is much the same, the War was finally over and Dad has returned.  Meyer & Frank in Portland advertised in the Oregonian that December 1945 that Lionel's were again available with a full page ad.   My reading ability was at the Dick, Jane, & Spot level but I understood pictures. I was really excited although not realizing that it was a lot of money at that time, but somehow Santa brought me a 1666 2-6-2 Prairie set for Christmas.  Within a month, Dad's next duty station was Bremerhaven, Germany as part of the occupation forces so I didn't see the Lionel again for another 3 years.  As you can imagine, in 1946 Germany was badly shot up everywhere, almost total devastation in most major cities, but the Transportation Corps already had the railroads operating, mainly with American-made locomotives fitted with European-style couplers and European cars.  Even though the Autobahn was still in good shape, at least one span of every highway bridge was blown into the river so train travel was the only practical method which we did. Even had the opportunity to ride standard, narrow gauge, and rack trains in Switzerland.  Like so many teenagers in the 1950's, the interest in trains didn't stay with me; model airplanes, particularly control-line combat was it.  The more noise and destruction, the better. My prized Lionel set went to a Sergeant's family so they could have Christmas too.  However, now that I'm definitely older but not much wiser, I have another 1666 along with a lot more. Somehow, its just as much fun.

Not the first memory, but an early one, of the double-window displays of Lionel and American Flyer ... really large layouts, in the show windows at Fredrick & Nelson, and Bon Marche, in downtown Seattle at Christmas time.  They went up after Thanksgiving and stayed active until coming down after New Years.

A couple of years they had the "Magic Hands" on the window where you could make an accessory operate, or a train on a loop run, by holding your hand on it!

And the year they had the Santa Fe diesels with the shiny silver streamlined train ... awesome!

So very cool!

And the Toy Department had literally hundreds of Lionel and American Flyer trains for sale!

We had tight purse strings so they were out of reach for the family, but we sure had a good time wishing at the windows.

All gone now ....

Here is a video of my brother's grandson's first ride on the Mighty Casey engine.The train set kept him happily occupied for hours.

Dan

Dan

Thanks for sharing the video.  Looks like your brothers grandson is having fun ride it! 

Ken

IT WAS THE LATE 40'S AND I LIVED IN CICERO,IL NEAR THE BURLINGTON YARDS. THERE WAS A OLD WOODEN BRIDGE THAT CROSSED THE MANY MANY TRACKS. WHEN  A STEAM OR DIESEL ENGINE WENT UNDER THE SMOKE WOULD COME UP BETWEEN THE  BOARDS IN THE BRIDGE. WE WOULD TRY TO STAND RIGHT ABOVE THE TRACKS WHERE THE TRAIN WAS TO GET A SHOT OF SMOKE. COOL!!

My earliest memory of anything having to do with trains, was my dad, a fireman for the Southern on Consolidations and Mikados, when I was about 3 or 4, drawing a picture of a locomotive (I can't remember which but think a Mikado) on my small childhood blackboard in chalk.  After several moves and immediately after WWII, I lived (on Depot Lane to a Southern station)  across from a cousin who had a prewar Lionel set with the latch couplers (I have the station and water tower from that set). The set was stolen out of his basement storage locker in an Evansville, Ind. apt. house some years ago.  But that set and his permission to run it on his bedroom floor generated a pleading for "an electric train", which materialized soon as a #25000 Marx set under the tree.  And there was my grandfather's copy of a circa 1940 Kalmback photo book on Colorado railroads, including narrow gauge, (I have that book, too), and so I was hooked on trains, real, toy, and model.

We never visited a cranky sort of uncle until one holiday when I was about 8. When I walked in, the first thing that I saw was an HO train layout with four lines running. Eventually, he put me at the controls and I was hooked. The following year, I awoke Christmas morning to find my own 2 line HO set. A small switcher type steam loco with freight and an F type B & O passenger train. My cousin received a Lionel train that year and I wanted the "big ones", but that never happened. I enjoyed my Mantua Metals trains for years.

This was reinforced when I was twelve. Another uncle worked the PRSL in S.Jersey and I met him at a switch that serviced a refinery. Went for the whole deal in the caboose and back to the yard with a ride in the engine.

Last year, with a 1 1/2 year old grandson, I bought a "big one". The Polar Express. Now we are both hooked. I took him to the Day Out with Thomas this year at Strasburg. Now we really like trains!