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Post by josef on Sept 21, 2019 22:56:56 GMT
Next month, October, but going back decades to October 1956. My dad said after supper I have a surprise for you all. So after supper we all filed into his 1956 Ford and drove to Kankakee. Dad parked his car and we walked across the street to The Paramount Theater. The movie was of course, The Great Locomotive Chase. Except for dad and mom, us kids still couldn't understand or speak English yet. But there was no need to, the action, the Trains told us everything. That movie, which I've loved over all these decades, is what got me interested in trains. It also had me looking for books and magazine, anything that had to do with trains. Yup, you guessed it, The Great Locomotive Chase is showing on my layout. We weren't rich, my first train set was a Marx battery operated set which I still have.  
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Post by Joe Saggese on Sept 21, 2019 23:16:59 GMT
Great story Josef!! Its the simple things that parents do that wind up leaving a lifetime of rich memories, as can be seen on you layout....... Thanks for sharing  |
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Post by harborbelt70 on Sept 21, 2019 23:49:03 GMT
That is a great story. My Dad was very much into Lionel trains in the 1960s and no doubt before. He built a layout in our basement, which my best friend with his HO-loving father scoffed at because of the third rail.
Almost nothing of the equipment survives but my brother and I each have an engine, both Santa Fe. After I got into the 3rail hobby in a big way about 20 years ago, I realized how much my Dad had spent on the equipment (out of a steelworker's pay) and how serious he was about it.
By the way, this all happened over the state line (to the east) from Kankakee. And a bit to the north in Chicagoland and "The Region."
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Post by Adam on Sept 21, 2019 23:58:16 GMT
Great story. My uncle was big into trains and he had a layout in his basement. It always fascinated me. I asked for an electric train set for Christmas and finally got one when I was 9. I played with it until I was about 14 and put it in a box (discovered girls). I finally had the time (and space) to pick the hobby back up last year, more than 30 years later.
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Post by rockymountaineer on Sept 22, 2019 1:21:53 GMT
Who stirred my interest in trains? That's easy... both my Dad and Mom.
My Dad had a co-worker connection at the old Lionel Toy Corporation on Hoffman Place in Hillside, NJ. So that sealed the deal for getting some O-27 trains from the Lionel 1966 catalog. The O-27 trains fit my parents budget, but I always had expensive taste and I recall drooling over the Super-O train set in that catalog that cost a whopping $225, which was way out of our budget. But hey, back in those days $225 was probably close to a month's wages for my Dad. And it included the 773 NYC Hudson, several operating cars, a ZW transformer, and Super-O track with a pair of remote control turnouts. But again... this was 1966, a very different time. 
My Mom's contributions to my love of trains had more to do with "real trains", since she and her sister lived in neighboring towns accessible via the old Erie Lackawanna (now NJ Transit) Gladstone line. So we often visited by train. The rest, as they say, was history.
David
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Post by ptc on Sept 22, 2019 16:26:23 GMT
This is a wonderful thread subject, Joesf. I very much enjoyed reading about your start in this hobby.
Lionel Trains were very big when I was a kid. One Christmas morning under the Christmas Tree, I found a complete layout built on a plywood sheet with roads, builidngs, and a Lionel Berkshire freight set. The next Christmas, the Sante Fe F3's with the Lionel Lines Aluminum passenger cars. It has been all trains ever since. |
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Post by josef on Sept 22, 2019 16:36:13 GMT
This is a wonderful thread subject, Joesf. I very much enjoyed reading about your start in this hobby.
Lionel Trains were very big when I was a kid. One Christmas morning under the Christmas Tree, I found a complete layout built on a plywood sheet with roads, builidngs, and a Lionel Berkshire freight set. The next Christmas, the Sante Fe F3's with the Lionel Lines Aluminum passenger cars. It has been all trains ever since. It's interesting to find out how people got into this hobby, and I enjoy reading these posts. It wasn't till 1961 that there was an electric train in our house, and it went to my younger brother. I only gave up trains during my service years and college. Then my wife when I got married told me she would like a train under the tree at Christmas time. From there on, except during a brief period were I went to flight school, and later spent 3 months every year on tours. There was always a layout in spare bedroom, or basements I came home to and relax with.
Your Christmas layouts, bring back many happy memories and every time you post a picture(s) I see something new, exciting, and talented. It was interesting to read how you got into trains. Who was behind the Christmas theme? You or the wife?
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Post by laz57 on Sept 22, 2019 17:02:27 GMT
Hi JOSEF,
I too got started with the Christmas morning train set when I was a kiddo. Put it under the tree until my nephew came into the world then my brother confiscated the family train set. At about the year 1999 while at a friends house during Christmas, he reintroduce me to the new world of toy trains. From there it went downhill and for the next 20 years my collection grew as well as the layout. beginning as a carpet floor oval to a bigger 14 x 16 footer, with all the bells and whistles. It gives me a place to relax enjoy a few beers and get away from the WIFE and everything else fo an hour or so every Friday and Saturday night. Great to sit and think what to do next on the layout or just daydream of how far we came and where we will be heading in the future. Great hobby.
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Post by dennym57 on Sept 22, 2019 18:02:40 GMT
Great story Josef. I'm not sure of the exact year, it was the early 60s. My dad bought me,a Lionel 2037 steamer with car and track. Over the years I would pull out the trains and run them.
One day I was looking for something in my mom's filing cabinet and what do I find, that old 2037. I took it to the nearest train store where the train tech (Bob Phillips) restored it, the bug bit and here I am.
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Post by Country Joe on Sept 22, 2019 19:28:59 GMT
Josef, this is a very interesting thread. I've enjoyed reading how each guy got into the hobby.
I grew up with trains. Santa brought my first train, a Lionel work train pulled by a 2020, for Christmas 1949. I was born a week later. My dad had wanted a Lionel train when he was a boy but his family was too poor to spend money on any toy much less an expensive Lionel train. Each year Santa brought me something for my trains but the first that I remember was Christmas 1954 when I was almost 5. It was a New York Central ABA F3 with Magna Traction. What a beautiful and powerful locomotive! I've been a NYC fan ever since.
My dad and I built an 8x8 Lionel layout when I was around 8-10 and it's one of my fondest memories. When I was about 13 or so I discovered girls, guitars, rock, and roll and left trains behind until Christmas 1967 when I got the urge to set my trains up under the Christmas tree. That reignited my train fever and I've been involved ever since, but I thank my dad for getting me started in this wonderful hobby.
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Post by Deleted on Sept 22, 2019 22:35:02 GMT
About 1948 I got a train for Christmas. Lucky me, to have a train at one. I wonder who wanted it most.
I had various layouts, rebuilt when we moved but in 1988 we bought a Viking 41’ sport fish. Train funding took second place and my family grew up fishing offshore from Hatteras, NC and Virginia Beach.
Limited collecting still took place for the “dream layout,” but it wasn’t until about 2014-15 that we got serious about a train room. Hatteras Inlet was becoming dangerously shallow, my crew was getting old, and I was fishing in Virginia Beach on a friends 65’ Paul Mann sport fish. The boat, as much as we loved it, no longer made sense. We went to York, began building structures (about one per month), and started serious planning.
In 2018, we sold the boat, began construction on the train room, and began accumulating what was needed. A three level layout is planned, level one track work is almost complete, and as soon as we get the electrical/control/wiring satisfactorily completed for level one, level two construction will begin. Almost everything that we are doing is new to us and we have received a tremendous amount of help from other forum participants all over the US.
We never expect to finish but the journey is what we are excited to be on.
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Post by JKP on Sept 23, 2019 2:22:52 GMT
My start in the train hobby was in the 'seventies' with a Tyco train set. I started collecting Lionel in the nineties, did layout 08-09.
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Post by pebo on Sept 23, 2019 13:36:16 GMT
Great stories Josef and all.........my 1st memories are of being on my maternal grandfather’s shoulder, watching the EL trains in the northeast Bronx.....the number 6 at Middletown Rd.
Later on, as a 3 or 4 year old and my Dad’s parents home, I watched McGinnis liveried Jets (EP-5s) fly by on the 4 track New Haven main line.
Peter
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Post by Deleted on Sept 23, 2019 13:53:09 GMT
My mother has pictures of me at the young age of 2 with my hand on a ZW throttle, running a 773 Hudson on super O track on the carpet layout in the late 60's. The rest they say is history.
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Post by pebo on Sept 23, 2019 13:59:20 GMT
Christmas 1958  |
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