Found a fun book at the library titled The Toy Train Department (c. 1996) that reproduces model train pages from Sears Christmas Wish Books and it includes some N Scale. From 1968, the year I received my first N Scale set: and from 1969 ....
That last one looks a lot like the first one I had in 1992. Guess were I bought it. I also built a larger layout. Parts from a local shop. They stayed down there in Western Milwaukee County in 2005.
The Aurora "Postage Stamp" Santa Fe F-unit diesel is almost certainly the same unit as the Aurora F9 (made by Minitrix) that I bought around 1970 or 1971. It was an outstanding N scale loco for its day, and I still have mine.
That is really neat. It almost brings back the same feelings/excitement you had as a kid and saw those pages. It's also neat that I have some of those same trains these days. Also note the inevitable derailed car/loco (the dummy Santa Fe loco in the Aurora set on the second age) since it's doubtful any of those trains were set up for photographs by anybody resembling a model railroader. Doug
Seeing the Aurora and Revell names at Sears impressed me, as both brands were well made and what N Scale needed to grow. There was also some junk produced by other manufacturers that likely slowed N Scale's acceptance. I don't recall seeing model trains at Sears, but when my Dad and I went to Sears, it was for tools and not trains. Many of y'all remember that N Scale was widely sold at locally-owned department stores and sporting goods stores back then, and magazine stands always had rail magazines on hand. A good selection of Doug's Treble-O-Trains and accessories were available at our local drug store. These were heady times to be a kid in love with trains!
Quote from the add: "N-gauge trains use about 1/4 the space needed for HO". What a load of (Expletive deleted)!! You're supposed to use the same amount of space and buy 4 times as much! Any idiot should know that, I certainly did . . . hey, wait a minute . . .
Wow. What memories.... I loved those catalogs. I am so tempted to check into getting a copy of that book.
It was a fun era too outside of trains, with all kinds of space and rocket ship toys, and secret agent toys too. I wanted this one soooo bad, but never got it.
I had one of those back in the day as well as the "Knife" that turned into a "Gun" Can you imagine what would happen if somebody tried to reissue those "Secret Guns" in this day and age? Cities would be burned in protest.
Yep, us Baby Boomers had cowboy pistols, plastic rifles and even BB and pellet guns and somehow turned out okay. I sometimes enjoy cruising the Internet just to see pictures and stories about favorite toys. Mattel's Creepy Crawlers was a memorable favorite, featuring a hot plate that plugged into a wall outlet. It was rightly assumed back then that kids (like the lad curiously wearing a necktie) had the wisdom to not burn themselves.
Yep, had one of those as well and I never once tried to cook an egg on the hot plate. Do you remember "Incredible Edibles"?
As I recall when I lived in the Milwaukee area, the model trains were sold in the auto repair buildings at South Gate and Brookfield Square. But that ended in the late '90s. As well as Sears itself began to.
Even the toys I had in the 80's were superior to what is out now. I had guns of all kinds, even a robot that turned into a Walther P38 (Megatron) and it was not painted bright orange! My friend and I had a "foundry" to cast our own hot wheels cars out of wax. Once we ran out of the wax that came with the "Master Caster" we used candles. We quickly found out how to make different color combos and which wax type worked best for the cars. Yes we got our fingers a bit singed from the hot wax, but it quickly taught us to how and when to handle the cars. I do not know what happened, we have let too many snowflakes get into positions were they can dictate how we live our lives, and how we are supposed to care for our children. I will jump off this soap box before I get too far into it and prolly get my self in forum jail. I miss the toys of old!
Ah, the eighties. My son was born in 1982 and we bought him some of the Ghostbusters figures when he was about 2 1/2 - 3 years old. One day, he came into the living room and said he thought he had all of the figures. He kept saying that for days and we finally realized he had dreamed about having all of them. Doug
I got into N Scale in 1964 with a Lone Star 0-8-0 set and a length of Peco OOO flex track. Too bad Peco hasn’t seen fit to do proper N Scale track in the 57 years they have been producing 9mm track. Everything else in N has improved......and Peco has done every conceivable combination of track construction in scales from G to Z....but we still have the same stupid oversized ties and spacing that we had BEFORE N!! Grrrrrr!! Charlie Vlk
All we are doing is showing that we came from a time when Kids could be Kids. Not worried about toy guns, climbing on Mokey Bars, going down to river to swim and having unsupervised play/FUN. We could have a DOG spend all day with us. We could cross the street ANYWHERE, go down to the rail yard, and other things that would cause SNOWFLAKE heart attacks today. Mom told us to have fun, Dinner would be at 5 o'clock and if you wanted to eat, you would be Home.
Our grandkids are going to have issues thanks to their helicopter parents. I wore out a 24” Schwinn and had to replace the coaster brake / pedal cranks on a 26” Evans. I rode that bike all over and as porkypine52 came home only for dinner. Was a patrol boy until I took ditched my post and used the early dismiss/late resume from class at lunchtime to ride from school to hit two hobby shops in the neighboring town of LaGrange. (Last day on the force...somebody noticed!!) Summers I would ride to the Brookfield depot to watch the “afternoon parade” on the Burlington...TCZ, DZ, CZ, NCL, EB, dinkies, and other passenger trains with freights added for more action. Got to see O5 Northerns pulled out of reserve for the grain rush of 1957. I doubt that our grandkids even know how to ride a bike and if they do they likely haven’t rode more than a block from their house. Charlie Vlk
