Still have it although rather tattered!
8th printing October 1958.
D500 posted:I bought the reprint of my 1958 edition (my original was falling apart; I bagged it) offered by Lionel 20(?) years ago, and was disappointed that the reproduction (essentially a photocopy process, it seems) was not properly focused, and all those sharp B/W photos are fuzzy. A shame, and unnecessary. Offered again, properly done, I'd buy one.
It's unfortunate, but my thought has always been that archivists and reprinters should up their game. Being out of focus or poor quality reproduction should not be allowed. It's only going to get worse every time something is remastered into a different format. But for some reason, no one seems to care that the new edition is worse than the original edition.
Probably there is no real money in preservation. 
The only model train books I had as a boy were the great Lionel Catalogs from the 1950s. They were more than enough to spur my interest in toy trains. As a young adult my first purchase in 1976 was Operating 0 and 027 trains by Maury D. Klein and Bruce Greenberg. This was soon followed up with Greenberg's Model Railroading with Lionel Trains by Roland Lavoie. Lavoie's book really got me started into the maintenance and repair facet of the hobby. After that the floodgates opened and much to my wife's chagrin our house is filled with train books.
I wonder what books the kids and other newcomers are starting out with today? Should Kalmbach or OGR think about bringing out an updated book for today's situation?
Thank everyone for responding. I'm surprised at the variety of books that everyone had, a few of them I have never seen.
Top of page one. What Vic said.
Lionel's Bantam book. Still have it and one used that I P/U at a hobby shop.
The first couple of books I remember that gave me some good info on track plans and gave me things to dream of building were the books "Railroads you can model" and "More Railroads you can model " by Mike Schafer. I loved the track plans and descriptions of railroads that at the time I'd never heard of (and I had no clue how to correctly pronounce "Missabe," as in the Duluth, Missabe and Iron Range Railway, a chapter in one of the books (I also didn't know how to pronounce, "Mikado" until I finally encountered someone who corrected me as a teen). Anyway, I loved those books. Now that I think on it, I might try to find them again...
Really, though, most of the early inspiration came from magazines, not books.
By the time I got the John Allen book, I was well into the hobby as a teen. Most general books on the hobby, to me, weren't very useful.
1939 Lionel catalog..
My 1st book is a now disintegrated copy of the Bantam Book.....replaced with a newer copy.
After my my 1972-80 hiatus from the hobby, two books brought me back in....
Ron Hollander's All Aboard & Bruce Greenberg's Model Railroading Guide.
Peter
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eddie g posted:1939 Lionel catalog..
You are right, Eddie.......my 1st train book really was the 1958 Lionel catalog.
Peter
Mine was "The Big Book of Trains," by George Zaffos.
All the pictures were hand drawn in the original.
He was related to our family.
George
George Harritos, I wore my copy out of "The Big Book of Real Trains". The illustrations were fantastic.
My first model railroad book however was "Operating O and )-27 Trains". This book got me hooked into one day building a full size layout.
As you can see, my copy saw some action trackside over the years.
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Model Railroad Craftsman.
Craig Donath posted:Marshall McClintock's book came packed with some American Flyer trains in the 50s.
At the time I could only dream of what I saw in that book.
McClintock's book was also my first real model railroad book, although I poured over (my Dad's) American Flyer catalogs as well as the small operating and layout planning handbooks that Gilbert put out. My first purchase on my own of a model railroad publication was the October 1959 edition of Railroad Model Craftsman.
As a committed Armchair Railroader, I should cross post this on the "Horders" thread because I own nearly ever toy and model railroad book published, crates of RMC, MR, TCA, TTOS, S Gaugian, etc., binders with all of the issues of CTT and with quite a few books about real railroading, all acquired in the nearly 70 years since Dad bought the first AF Atlantic freight set.
Cheers!
Alan
PRRronbh posted:Still have it although rather tattered!
8th printing October 1958.
Ditto for me! Also still have my original version (although it's in somewhat better shape than the one pictured). I read that book so darn many times as a boy that I considered it a "bible" in the formative years of my involvement in the hobby. Also have the Greenberg repro of this book.
Model railroad scenery by Dave Frary.
I wore my copy out of "The Big Book of Real Trains". The illustrations were fantastic.
I did not have that book as a kid. My mother-in-law gave me a copy from her house. I cannot count the number of times I read it to my sons. We wound up with a second copy, which was revised.
As I recall, the newer edition had some additional freight cars and a diesel. The new illustrations were in black and white. The older ones were in color.
Somewhere tattered and missing pages, in the bottom of a box, is a toddler's picture book that shows individual cars and steam engine, including a yellow Katy caboose. My free lance road has many, all yellow, cabooses. The next prototype book of influence was grandfather's copy of a Kalmbach photo book on Colorado railroads. I think my first model book came later and was the Bantam book above. It, too, was tattered when last l remember it
The Bantam Books 5th Edition pictured above is what I wore out back in the 50's and early 60's! I still have it held together with rubber bands, like some of the others on this thread! Over the years the train library has grown to include a number of the books listed above. But, David Doyles "Lionel Train Sets, 1945 -1989" is what got me back to the train shows and the auctions. That's when the collection of sets I could never afford as a kid, student, and young person started to grow!!
My first book was about "Sneezer", a nice little 4-4-0 that went "ah-choo,ah-choo" instead of "choo, choo" like the other trains. Sneezer saved the day by refusing to run over a bridge that he knew would collapse.
Well, what can I say...
