Got to thank my parents for this. After I left for college, they stashed it away for safe keeping. After I got married and bought a house, they remined me that they still had it and returned it to me. Since then, I have been through multiple moves and a divorce but I managed to hang onto it.
While I agree with you guys about memories, I am the type who just can't leave something that should be running, alone. It's almost a compulsion (or compelsion, as Barney put it ) to work on something until it works again. I guess that's why any locomotive I have ever had, including a 1949 American Flyer Atlantic, still runs. It also still bugs me that I have the weight from my late brother's 1961 Tyco F9 and I can't get it running again because the rest of it was given away sometime in the past. Doug