What with all the Christmas thoughts beginning to roll around this time of year I was reminded of my first experience with model railroading. On my fifth Christmas in 1968 I got a Lionel steam train set with the oval of track on bare plywood with casters so it would roll under my bed. The transformer was screwd down on a corner. I drew roads on the plywood for my matchboxes( no, it wasn't Greenbrier). I remember laying a matchbox car( or a butter knife) across all three rails shorting things out! What fun. I've loved the hobby ever since. What was your first electric train experience? Sorry about the non Frisco content but with Chistmas coming up I thought it would fun to see where we all got our start.
1949 I think, my sixth birthday. My parents got me a Lionel O-gauge steam set. I think the locomotive was 675 or 679, or something like that. It was a 2-6-2 wheel arrangement, but it was made up to look like a PRR K4s Pacific. I loved that engine - ran the wheels off of it until my college days, when I switched to HO. I even remember the cars - a PRR double door box car, a log car (automatic remote control tilting!), a Sunoco tank car, a Lehigh Valley hopper, and a ATSF style lighted caboose. Wow! Later on, we added more cars (NYC gon, ATSF box, a white reefer, a yellow stock car, a work caboose, and a UP Alco FA-FA set and a four-car lighted streamline passenger car set, automatic switches, a semaphore, a crossing gate, etc. Double wow! Thus, not only my love of model railroading was sparked, but my interest in the PRR, NYC, the ATSF, the UP, and Alco's was born. In 1964, while I was in Alvin, Texas on an assignment for Monsanto, my dad called and said he had a guy who would buy the whole thing for $25. I said OK. Can you believe that !!!!! Ken
Mine was January 2006. I had been wanting a train set for a while I had bought one in early December of 05. Any one remember the John Deere and Coke train sets at Wal Mart? I believe they were made by Athearn. (Although now that I think back on it, it more resembled a life like train set) Well I bought one of those, worked for a week then it broke. Took it back. To my disappointment I didn't get one for Christmas. So I went down the Hobby World in Joplin (now closed) and ended up with a nice (at the time) life like "Iron Horse" train set. It had a little 0-4-0 Union pacific steamer with tender, a MCE box car, a Greenfield and Western (I think) 2 bay hopper, a gray tank car (cant remember the company) and a UP caboose, a loop of power lock track (few years down the road I figure out the stuff is CRAP) power pack and a bridge with risers. I even remember I bought an extra switch and 2ft of track so a siding and an Athearn tank car. The thing kept picking the switch so I took it back. It was nice while I had it. I still have the loco, but it's in pieces, the box car, the hopper and the caboose became testing stations for paint, the tank car is now an oil tank next to the tracks. Ethan
My first was an old Penn Line Northern Pacific passenger set! [ HO] I was 5, and the basement was full of my brothers & dad's Lionel empire. I still remember being chased out from behind the water heater by my brother, who did not appreciate his younger sibling pushing around "his" trains! Dan
My first electric train was the infamously cheesy Lionel "Black Cave Flyer", circa 1982. I remember it having "DANGER" and monster eye stickers on the sides of the cars. It was perhaps a tad better than the pink Lionel Girl's Train of the late 50's. My first HO train set was a stereotypical Bachmann Santa Fe special around the same time frame. I think I appealed to my parents for something that looked more like the real thing. It didn't seem to run well for some reason, so not long after that I got a Tyco Santa Fe train set that last for few years. My Grandpa made a table for it out of plywood and I drew my roads with crayons. I got my first "real" train in 1987, an Athearn Burlington Northern F unit. It was a big deal in that (a), a friend of my Grandpa's ordered it through the mail, and (b) it wasn't Santa Fe. Pat Moreland, Union Mo. "Birds on the Bat, 11 in '11"
This has been a fun thread to read. I started in HO-Scale: a Tyco "Golden Eagle" set. The locomotive was an imagineered 6-axle job with a high short hood. It wasn't long after this that my cousin picked up a Tyco "Chattanooga" consolidation, and the steam bug had bitten! A bit of a digression, but one of the first locomotives I ever purchased was an O/W Frisco F-unit from TJ's Hobbies in Cape Girardeau. It was painted by a member of this forum who was a whiz kid at modeling even back then. Further off-topic: Ethan, congratulations on the state trophy - 49-19 is a pretty convincing state championship victory! Best Regards,
This post from Aug 29 (http://www.frisco.org/vb/showthread.php?5494-1st-pictures-of-new-layout&p=38371#post38371) contains pictures of my first electric train set that I got for Christmas of 1980, headed by a Red War Bonnet/Chrome-looking UB30-7, running on my layout 3 months ago. I'm can still run it on the original power pack. The locomotive eventually died and I gutted it to make a dummy. After several years, I purchased a duplicate on ebay and performed a "transplant" allowing me to run the original shell again. The rolling stock has had minor transplants along the way (trucks, couplers). I even still have some of the original track that I plan on using for a RR museum on the new layout, but I haven't ran anything on that track in at least 11 years since I got on my own and moved out of my parents house for good after college. By the way, Jim, thanks for staring this thread!!!
My first electric train was a Bachmann On30 2-6-0 In a christmas paint scheme with three passenger cars that we set around the Christmas tree. I was two when my parents first set it up. I still have the train though. We changed the Number plates after one fell off the engine. The new locomotive number is #93 for the year I was born. I got a 2-4-0 Switcher about four years back that is now #96 for my little brother so we double head the two for christmas each year. Ship it on the Frisco!!! Murphy Jenkins
First thing I remember was before I was 5 and I remember a couple of Walthers (I guess) O scale cars my Mom had built. I recall a Schlitz billboard reefer, a cattle car and a single dome tank car. This was during the war (WWII) and in 1945 we moved from that house to Maplewood and my Dad started a Lionel layout.
A. C. Gilbert HO scale: NP F-Unit, steel flat w/plastic, Borden Milk Tank; Boxcar, would eject a crate on the fly; an odd, cupola/bay-window caboose. First Frisco steam: Aristocraft USRA Lt Mikado; First Frisco rolling stock: Athearn Frisco dbl-door box, yellow.
Ok. My first HO train (1975 I think) was a Bicentennial diesel set with brass snap track and a searchlight car and an operating crane car. Soon to follow was a Tyco 4-6-0 and some brass flex track with fiber ties of some sort. After that it was on! My first Frisco I guess woud be my first attempt 4-4-0 followed by Westerfield resin freight kits.
I guess I will add to my story. My first Frisco engine was a Athearn GP40-2. I bought it January 2009 (if memory serves the 2nd) from Trainland Hobbies in Springfield. Few days later I joined this wonderful forum. Ethan
My first electric train was a Christmas present as well. I was probably 5 and received a pedal tractor, however when dad started putting it together it was missing parts. The folks took it back to Walmart, but they were sold out. The manager called a neighboring store they were also sold out as well, but they had a Tyco Chattanooga choo choo train set with their version of a GP-9. The folks got it for me even though I was pretty young for HO and that's when it all began. Jim, great idea for a thread, brings back some good memories of a much simpler time. Brad Slone
My very first electric train was a battery powered one that followed a rubber tube that was laid on the floor. About ten years ago, I found the same train in an antique shop, MIB! I bought it and pictures of it are below. Sorry guys, it wasn't a Frisco train, but I have sworn off the offending line as the path of least resistance for modelers - their stuff can be found with no effort.
Not electric, but a Marx Windup! I was 2-1/2 years old, opening my present at Christmas... I still have the train, and it still works, although it is pretty rough. Plus, I still collect Marx windup trains! This is a video of the same train running nearly 4 decades later: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vbrb9Njv4VM Good thread, even if it isn't specific to Frisco... it is still part of my interest in trains, and therefore part of my interest in Frisco! - James
Hmmmmmm, Seeing James's post it reminded me that I have my Grandpa's train set. Don't know the year but late 40's probably. O scale made by Marx with a figure 8. Still has all the original parts too, including power pack (not multi directional) and wires! Ethan
Like so many others, I was hooked by a Lionel set at an early age. On my fourth Christmas my grandfather gave me a set with a die-cast 2-4-2 and caboose lettered for the Grand Trunk Western, a green Burlington gondola, a blue GN hopper, and a yellow UP flatcar. The roadnames on the cars were among the first things I remember reading, although the odd spacing of letters around the framing on the GN hopper flummoxed me for a while. I got the odd idea that the mountain goat in the GN logo was saying "GR, EAT NO RTHE RN". I understood "GR" as being a sound that animals made, but the rest seemed to be some kind of cryptic nutrition advice. What the heck was an RTHE RN, and why shouldn't I eat one? I still have the rolling stock, although the loco eventually needed a motor transplant after a year or two of being pushed around on the floor by a toddler who didn't quite understand the concept of an *electric* toy train.
Christmas 1965. Marx "Big Rail Work Train". I got shocked when I had to move the track from off of the floor furnace by orders of the Super. By the time the summer rolled around my grandparents, who were big garage sale hounds, had found enough track to circle the living area of the house. Knowing what I know now, the locomotive would grind to a halt about 20 feet from the transformer because of voltage drop. I'd still push it around untill it started running again.
