This time a few decades ago were you hoping for a Train set at Christmas?

On 2011-12-17, snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk wrote: ...

Ditto. And then nothing else for many many years.

But in a way I'm still hoping for a Train set at Christmas! :)

Eric

Ditto.

This was in the post war years, and the family all boughtme different bits, mostly pre-war second hand including lots of track.

My father and my uncle very kindly set it up on the floor for me, very kindly played with it for me and very kindly let me operate the signal.

Tri-ang 00. 2-rail, moulded balast-like track base (Hornby was still

3-rail tinplate). Jinty & some coal trucks: later a royal mail coach with working bag pick-up. Long gone.

When I was a small child, we had a "Big Big Train" set, but that was more of a family toy used by both me and my brother rather than something belonging to either of us. And that, too, was obtained second hand - I think we inherited it from a relative whose children had outgrown it - rather than a present as such.

I never got a "proper" train set for Christmas, or birthday for that matter, despite repeatedly dropping hints that I wanted one. Even after I'd splashed out my own pocket money to buy some second hand track, a loco and some bits of rolling stock from a friend (I never had a "train set" at all, in that sense), I never got any additions for it at Christmas either!

Nothing of the Big Big stuff survives. I still have some of my early purchases of model railway equipment.

Mark

My father returned from The War in 1945-ish with a 3-rail O-gauge train set for me - an "oval" of track and a 2 coach EMU, in a red-ish coloured box with "Jep Bas-Volt" on the label. As somebody else almost commented it could easily have been for him as for me, since it was only set out while he was there (20 volts could have been lethal for a 4 yearold!). Needless to say, it was boring, and wasn't compatible with Hornby so it lived under my bed getting dusty while I had the usual Hornby 0-4-0 tank engine (brake and reverser brass knobs sticking out of the cab) and some goods trucks, along with a couple of points to add interest. The basic Hornby set was a Christmas present, the last railway present I got until I was very much older.

Luckily I had a friend with a large Hornby-Dublo layout which we gradually developed. But it wasn't mine. That had to wait until I came home from college when I built a TT layout in my bedroom. The layout moved to our new house when I got married and had the wash-house all to itself. I then decided to go over to N-gauge and the TT went to my elder son and then into the loft where it still resides. The N-gauge layout is still "under-construction" after 25 years, and although the wash-house was demolished to make way for an extension to the house, the railway is still in roughly the same spot.

That "Jep Bas-Volt" set went to the Frodsham Model Railway Club in the mid-50s, and I lost track (pun intended) of it when the Club folded because the building it was using was listed to be demolished. The Hornby O-gauge stuff was donated to a fellow modeller for his kids while I was at college, so there's nothing left of my childhood modelling except memories... ;-(

Don't know if it was Hornby or Triang, but I got a Princess Royal set - hence my addiction to them and Duchesses. Father set it up and I was later allowed to play with it. Then it got put away and was allowed to put track on carpet once per year. Father gave it away many years ago - but it was to someone with disabled child.

40 years later, bought one year old a set - still adding to my set that he lets me play with.

CHeers, Simon

Never heard of them so intrigued I went looking.

Was the two car unit the one that features on this page?

G.Harman

Right colour scheme, but mine was a much bigger item. The two cars were each about 12" long, articulated: plain bogies at the outer ends with a motor-bogie in the centre, covered by a removable grey concertina-type "corridor connection" (full width - a bit like a modern Manchester tram). When the TEE trains appeared many years later, my thought was that "I had a train like that!" Working head and tail lights, too. Its big problem in operation was that the current pick-up was a single stud, about the size of a 10p coin, which skated along the centre rail and very quickly got dirty and stopped picking up...

At the end of the war, my father built my first train set - a pre-war Trix 0-4-0 tank which had been modified to a 4-4-0, two coaches made from aluminium sheet, offcuts from the Blackburn factory where he worked, and rail on ERG sleepers on a plywood base - the plywood also from offcuts from the Blackburn factory. I can't remember doing a lot of running with this set but the set I did a lot of playing with came along a year later - a full German Trix set in a small square cardboard box which I now strongly suspect was re-patriated at the end of the war. :-) Dad went on to build another layout for me some years later, again to Trix standards with hand built track. I started doing my own thing with TT3 in my teens.

Jim.

In message , snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.co.uk writes

My first set was post war Hornby 0 gauge. Black 0-4-0 clockwork tank loco, track, wagons etc. Great fun. That was probably 1956 or 7.

The big occasion was Christmas 1960. A Hornby Dublo three rail electric goods set, with 0-6-2T loco, wagons, coaches and track. That was added to over the years, even after the introduction of 2 rail.

The 0 gauge went to a jumble sale after the Dublo arrived; the Dublo I still have.

I started with the same Dublo set (in LMS livery) for Christmas 1950. It was added to over the next 10 years or so until I went away to university. In 1965 I decided to continue my studies in Canada, and when I announced that I wasn't going back to the UK, my mother (without asking me) sold off all the Dublo to a neighbour.

However, she kept my box of Dinky, Dublo Dinky and Matchbox vehicles, which I was later able to bring to Canada. I supplemented them with second-hand items picked up at model shows, and since the 1990s have amassed a collection of 1:76 buses, trucks and cars from Corgi/Lledo, EFE, Oxfoxd, Base Toys and Pocketbond Classix.

Since retirement, I have built up a UK OO model railway layout with new and second-hand items from Hornby, Bachmann, Peco and others.

I still enjoy seeing 50-60 year old 3-rail Dublo trains running around at model train shows. Not highly detailed by modern standards, but they were solidly built and outlasted plastic Tri-Ang!

I don't remember the first set I got - I'm reliably informed I was six months old when I got it. It's a Hornby-Dublo freight set with a 2-6-0 engine.

However, I do remember getting my second when I was 18-months old. My father was on leave (engineer in the Merchant Navy) and me, him and my mother were standing in the shop entrance (y'know, one of those with the recessed entrance and windows down either side) of one of the shops on Walton Road, Liverpool (less than 100yds from Goodison Park). They looked at the set, a freight set with a Jinty, and discussed it and my father went in to buy it.

Both sets are upstairs under the pile of sets and engines and whatnot. I've always said that if push comes to shove, they'll be the last to be sold!

-- Rod

Nothing like starting early!

SNIP ..

Same here, theres some fascinating ones about, mostly with 'scenery' plonked around - something about them just makes me stand and watch ! As for the one with the giraffe ducking under the bridge :-)

Cheers, Simon

Ditto, except didn't get to run anything. 1946 - was three and could break anything in record time.

I was the same age then, but my dad wasn't into toy trains. New toys were hard to find just after the War. I got my first Dublo set at 7 - not via Hornby O, clockwork or electric.