I was about ten years old when my Dad bought me a S gauge American Flyer Pacific Steam Engine, a gondola, steam wrecker crane, one boxcar, and a caboose with large oval of track with one siding and turnout. I started in HO with a plastic none powered dockside 0-4-0T kit for about $1.50 a fews years latter, it was undecordated but the wheels turned and the side rods moved!
My first electric train was 1947 or 1948. My mom actually saved it for me (for almost 48 years) after I got a Lionel set in 1952. I ran this Marx set until the slide on the underside of the loco wore thru from the track. My father mailed the mechanism to the Marx Company in New York to see if it could be repaired. Marx sent me a whole new motor to put back in the shell at no charge. I did not know that it had been saved until after my parents passing in 1995 & 96. Now it's zooming around the tree once again while it awaits one of the grandsons to grow up.
My first ELECTRIC train was a Sears Allstate (Marx) HO train set (Red Warbonnet "F"... sort of... a gondola, BM Boxcar, and a bay window caboose) I received for Christmas in 1957(?) that I played to death within a year. However, that Marx set that Sirfoldalot posted really brings back some good memories of a similar set that was given to me by a teenager that had "outgrown" his trains. Mine was also a lithograph set, but with a NYC theme. Even today, I'm amazed at what Marx accomplished with their lithography abilities. I ran and ran and ran that Marx and it NEVER even hiccupped. Once I had acquired my first "scale" HO set (a Lindberg that was a great story in itself)... I gave the Marx set to a younger cousion. Don't know what ever happened to it after that. Wished I'd kept it. Merry Christmas everyone!
My brother and I had a Lionel "Scout" (Read budget) train set and we also had a Marx all red wind-up passenger train with a Commodore Vanderbilt "bath tub" streamline engine. We figured a way to use the Lionel engine and the Marx tender and passenger cars so as to have an "electric" passenger train. The Scout engine (a 2-4-2) and the Marx cars would probably go 350 scale MPH! Tom G. PS: Oh yeah, I took a kids water color brush and trimmed down and shortened the bristles and used some Testors white "Dope" (Model airplane paint) and lettered "F-R-I-S-C-O" under the cab windows of the Scout engine "just like" #4524 over in Grant Beach Park!
I enjoyed Tom's story about lettering his Lionel Scout for the Frisco with white airplane dope (lacquer for you young folks). Those were the days! My first (1961-1962) Frisco locomotive "fleet" was a trio of Tyco/Mantua steam locomotives - a 2-8-2 Mikado which I bought RTR from Tom's Trains as my first HO engine, plus the 0-6-0 "Shifter" and the 4-6-2 Pacific, both of which I built from kits bought from Henze's. I used Champ decals to "Friscoize" them, but the crowning glory was that I carefully cut out the small coonskins from Frisco matchbooks and glued them under the headlight so I had a coonskin on the front end. No matter that the coonskins were black, that they were a bit too big, and that they said "Frisco" instead of the locomotive number - it was SLSF enough for me! I don't remember what numbers I gave each of them. I sold all three in 1970 to a friend's kid who really wanted them (we needed $$$ to feed young Kurt). I'll bet they still exist. They didn't look anything like a Frisco prototype, but they ran great, and to me, looked great. SLSF all the way! Innovation, and the ability to make good with what you have, is a key to our hobby! Ken
