First Purchases?

Mine was an Athearn HO F7 with the Hi-F drive back in the mid-50's.  For those whose memories don't reach back that far or who never heard of it, it was the one that ran on 4 rubber bands stetched over a drive shaft and around thick rubber axles.  We've come a long way.........

It's long gone, the victem of a couple little over-zealous ankle-biters in the early 60's!

My first RR purchase?

(Don't laugh): While on holiday, and at aged 10, two green-painted OO/HO-scale Hornby passenger carriages and a three-foot length of HornbyOO/HO track.  The fact that  I didn't have anything to pull them along with was totally irrelevant - I had pocket money to spare and just 'had to have' the carriages and the track to 'run' them on (oh, the ignorance of childhood . . . )

(Although I had been given a very second hand Hornby 0-4-0 clockwork train set, I had never heard about electricity and model trains, and as for 'scale'?  That was what we had on the roses at home. . .) 

Of course the gloss soon wore off the gingerbread, and, surprisingly (understandingly?) the retailer actually accepted the items back two days later and gave me a full refund .  . .

And my first 'real' (as in: I think I know what I'm doing) MR purchase? 

Two Peco Varikit .009 locomotives running on Arnold 0-6-0 chassis' which I purchased in the (mistaken) belief that they were actually N-scale (well, they ran on N-scale track, they looked about the right size so how could they not be N?).  The things we learn - and yes, the bodies are still around - 'reduced to produce' (although the running gear died years ago and couldn't be revived), and still capable of causing reminisces when they are found while looking for something else. . .

Thanks for asking - it was a long time ago . . .

Komata

"TVR - serving the Northern Taranaki . . ."

 My first purchase was a Mantua 0-6-0 side tanker kit. I believe it was called the "Shifter" I worked over that loco with some fine drills and files. I even put a headlight in it. When it was finished and painted it ran very well and quite smooth. It had brass insert bearings in the zamac frame. That was in HO scale and a long time ago, to be more specific it was September of 1963. The song "I got you babe" by Sunny and Cher was in the top ten songs at the time.

Jacko 

Here's My TYCO from the 70's I worked on it with Dad when I was 10 It' long gone sold in a Garage Sale.

My first was a Roundhouse HO 0-6-0 with sloped back tender.  Would have been about 1958.  They made that for many years, but the early version was all cast metal. That's long gone. 

Absnut, thanks for reminding me of the rubber band drive-train on those old F units.  Loved the way they loped along as the rubber bands slightly expanded and contracted.

A used Bachmann GP-35 (I think) at a train show. It was a real trooper- here's an old picture of it hauling a grain train on my old layout that I had before I got married.

I was lucky to have started out in N scale, so I've been in it ever since. My Grandpa gave me a small layout that had been built by the neighbour who passed on. I got some rolling stock with it that I still have today. This caboose is one of them.

My parents, neither of whom are train people, infected me with trains when I was very young and one example was my tin lunch box I had when I started school. It had a CN TurboTrain on one side, a CP freight on the other and another CN train wrapping around the edges. I think it's still in my parents' house somewhere. (Go to this link and search for Canadian Pacific.)

The first actual model trains I had were two HO sets that my brother and I got for Christmas one year, when I was maybe 12 and he was 10. We even had a train room in the house (big farmhouse) but when we got into our teens, it sort of fell by the wayside.

The next time I got into trains was in 1996, when I moved to an apartment in a city and to keep from going mad, I started building the Carolina Central on a hollow core door. But then we bought a house 6 months later and trains were put away until around 3 years ago. Now I'm infecting my boys and my (tolerant) daughter with trains. :)

-mike

The first thing I remember purchasing was when I was a kid, saving my money and can labels to buy a Marx O27 set offered by Campbell Soup as a promotion.  Unfortunately that and all my old Lionel & Marx 3-rail stuff was destroyed in the late 70s...it was stored in a garage my dad had rented, and when the property the garage was on was sold, it was assumed that there was just junk in the garage, and it was bulldozed.

I'm just a newbie. My first purchases were a Kato EF-66 and an E-231 series 5 car set when I was in Japan last year.

Now that I know what a deal it was, I should have bought 10 times as much and no track.