I had a cheap plastic "train set" that was the wind-up type as my very first trains. I got this set when I was about 5 or 6 years old, which would have been Christmas of 1990. My first real layout came about 2 years after that. My father built a 4'x8' HO layout from a set that Life-Like produced. I wore that set out fast. That same old layout was rebuilt about 4 times before 2000. I credit my father with my start in the hobby. He always had an interest in trains and the hobby, but never really was serious about it. He stills runs his Lionel train he had since a boy around christmas time.
Lionel back in 1954 with my brothers. We had enough track for a doubled loop on a 5 x 9 ping-pong table. Then we had more track, so we set up on the basement floor. We could run the entire width of the basement--perhaps 24 feet.
Mine was the living room rug where I set up my farm, houses, fences, animals and all. I would drag my train around on the floor while my brothers got to play with the cool Marx stuff. Later one of my brothers built me a small 000 Lone Star layout on a green painted, 3 X 4 foot piece of plywood. This is one of the only photos I have of it so please excuse the Spad, Snoopy and the Soviet helicopter.
Oh man I had one of those snoopy dolls too. No excuses needed, snoopy is an American icon worth remembering.
Mine was a small oval HO layout from Tyco call The Silver Streak I got for my 12th birthday. My dad bought me a 4x8 piece of plywood and seveal cans of green spray paint for "grass" and some saw horses to set it on. Few months later I got Tyco's expansion for that set so the loop went around the perimiter of the 4x8 ply with a passing track on the inside of the loop. Ran that engine for hours till it died.
