Yay for Christmas trains! I think they are what got a good number of us involved with trains. Happy and Merry! Mark
I received one of the Tyco HO sets with the red switcher for Christmas one year. Wish I still had it.
How wonderful that you have that photo, thanks for sharing it. Seems like many of us can celebrate the anniversary our introductions into this hobby on this day. For me it's 62 years for O scale and 58 years for HO scale on this day.
Thanks. Actually, the B&W photo shows my dad and little sister and he was assembling a toy clock we got that Christmas called a "Build-A-Clock" and she was looking on. He always loved clocks and several are still in this house, including the full-size grandfather clock he built from scratch in 1971. My train set is in the foreground on the dining room table. A large version of the photo can be seen on my website (link below). Doug
I also received a Tyco set with a red switcher. It was a Santa Fe unit. No idea what kind of actual unit it was supposed to be. I actually still have the loco, buried away in storage. Getting to be close to 50 years ago that I received it. Without a doubt the very best Christmas gift I ever have received, and probably always will be! For quite a few years as a child, it wasn't Christmas without some kind of Tyco boxes under the tree.
I received an AHM HO set for Christmas in 1972 or 1973 and a Bachmann N scale set for Christmas in 1974 or 1975. I'll need to go back and look at the photos. Once I got the N scale set, I never went back to HO.
My late older brother got a Tyco set (#T6104) the previous year with the blue and yellow Santa Fe F9, three cars and caboose. That made me want my own train set even more than I had before that. A few years ago, I recreated his set after most of the pieces had been lost or sold. I did get all of it. I just haven't gotten the yellow box it came in. There was a box for the T6103 (same but a different road name) set but I was being too particular. I should have bought it. Doug
That's it, yep! Mine still ran when I last tried it - probably 10 years ago or so. It needed to be cleaned up, but still ran after that.
The only thing I've had for 60 years is the body I was .....gifted with. I did have a couple of the HO sets, or one may have been TT, it seemed smaller; maybe I just got bigger. Unfortunately, I was too young to care much for preservation and the adults around didn't help much either. That's where I got my first taste, smell of ozone. i remember that to this day. Also remember lying on floor, carpeted at that, and running those trains. I believe they were history within months, if not weeks. your case(60 yr old first set) is a joy to behold!
I should have mentioned that the color picture in my first post was taken in 1997 and the set still looks exactly the same, of course. Doug
Here's a Lionel set from the year I was born--(in part shown) in 2006. Same one under my tree this year!
Indeed a ZW. I inherited it from my late grandfather, who passed away in 2001. It probably needs a bit of maintenance, same with the Lionel engine pictured.
