Originally Posted by rustyrail o scale:
I thank my older sister for buying me my first O gauge train set in 1976 when I was ten. I still have the set which is a Marx Illinois Central Gulf diesel work train set. It still looks mint even though it's been run a gazillion miles. Can't say the same for the box though. I used to take it apart every day and put it back in the box before I went to bed at night. I never left it out in the floor. There was nobody there to bother it if I left it out but I always slept better knowing it was under my bed within arms reach
Thomas
My parents, although it was via collateral damage.
My folks bought a Lionel set for my brother when he was about 5 and I was a toddler. The family legend says that I sat in my highchair with my eyes as big as saucers as it ran around the track on the floor. Little did they know...
I had the usual wooden trains (with good ol' poke-your-eye out latch hook and eye "couplers") and a Marx wind-up during the year while the Lionel came out only at Christmastime.
Mix in a couple of American legion trips by train when I was a little older, then moving to the suburbs in the 60's (where the Lionel and later HO could be set up in the basement full time) and living between the IC and CB&Q, stir in the discovery of the local "Little Shop of Hobbies" and the rest is history.
BTW, while I retained the fascination with trains, my brother didn't.
Rusty