Did You Enjoy a Toy Train As a Kid?
I think my first toy train was best kids train sets and one of those metal windup engines with the windup key on the side. Yea, you might see something like that in a museum! OK, I am that old! Actually, I stand corrected ( OK, I'm sitting). I guess my first toy train was made out of wood. Those too can undoubtedly be found in a museum.
Then, when I was old enough I got a real model train. It was an American Flyer set with a steam engine! That's where it all started.
It wasn't much really. Our family didn't have much money so for a long time I didn't have much more than an oval to run it around. I had to use my imagination and creativity to provide towns and industries for the train to service.
A couple of years later my brother got a similar train set for Christmas. This gave us some options. We now had more tracks, more cars, and two engines if we combined out resources and played well together.
As I said, we didn't have a lot of money so there never was much expansion of our resources. There was one thing we did get however. Some time latter we got a whole lot more track and I think that somebody may have passed it on to us. This allowed us to run a long loop around our basement. Now we had a three bedroom ranch so the basement was a fair size. We had those trains highballing at times.
Those were some of the good times of my youth. I never built a true landscaped layout on a table. Those American Flyer train sets ended up in a box and eventually lost interest. A couple of years ago I sold them to a collector.
I didn't lose interest in model trains, though. I have a couple of N-scale train sets in a box tucked away that I occasionally set up. I never built a layout for them either. But I do operate trains on a regular basis. I know a couple of guys who have very extensive layouts and I have had the privilege of playing with trains on average two times a month for an evening. I've been doing this now for about twenty-five years.
Then, when I was old enough I got a real model train. It was an American Flyer set with a steam engine! That's where it all started.
It wasn't much really. Our family didn't have much money so for a long time I didn't have much more than an oval to run it around. I had to use my imagination and creativity to provide towns and industries for the train to service.
A couple of years later my brother got a similar train set for Christmas. This gave us some options. We now had more tracks, more cars, and two engines if we combined out resources and played well together.
As I said, we didn't have a lot of money so there never was much expansion of our resources. There was one thing we did get however. Some time latter we got a whole lot more track and I think that somebody may have passed it on to us. This allowed us to run a long loop around our basement. Now we had a three bedroom ranch so the basement was a fair size. We had those trains highballing at times.
Those were some of the good times of my youth. I never built a true landscaped layout on a table. Those American Flyer train sets ended up in a box and eventually lost interest. A couple of years ago I sold them to a collector.
I didn't lose interest in model trains, though. I have a couple of N-scale train sets in a box tucked away that I occasionally set up. I never built a layout for them either. But I do operate trains on a regular basis. I know a couple of guys who have very extensive layouts and I have had the privilege of playing with trains on average two times a month for an evening. I've been doing this now for about twenty-five years.