Recently, I had to decide how to dispose of my Lionel electric trains from the 1950s and 1960s. As many of you know, Anita and I are moving back to New York, somewhere on Long Island near our daughter Deb. Our age is catching up with us, and we need to be close to family and have better healthcare. We left New York in the early 1970s. It’s time to lighten our load before hiring a moving company.
When my parents passed away in the late 1990s, they had lived in their modest-sized home since the 1960s. Cleaning out their closets, basement, garage, and attic was a monumental task. It was amazing what we found. The closets, as were the rest of the places I mentioned, were jam-packed.
I sold furniture, donated clothing to charities, and took the remaining furniture and other stuff to our newly purchased home in Mount Crested Butte, Colorado. That included two sets of electric trains belonging to my brother and me, plus accessories. I had the black locomotive (shown above), a coal tender, and several other cars. His was an orange Union Pacific diesel (shown below) and accompanying cars.
That black locomotive set was from the 1950s. The engine had a working light on its front. You put a little pill in its smokestack, and smoke poured out as it went around the tracks. With a flick of a handle on the transformer (which powered and controlled the train), the whistle blew on the coal tender.
Two of my late uncles had electric trains. The black engine originally belonged to Uncle Joe. He would turn his small living room into a wonderland during the holidays. It covered a large tabletop with mountains, tunnels, bridges, country settings, small villages with train stations, little automobiles, and functioning utilities like coal chutes, lumber loaders, and uncoupling tracks to detach cars. Uncle Joe would crawl under the entire landscape and pop up in the middle, and with his transformers, he powered and controlled several train lines.
As kids, we were in awe. I always wished I could have a setup like that. But our trains just went around under the Christmas tree, which was still fun. Years later, I had a friend named Vinny with a comparable setup. His wasn’t a once-a-year thing but a permanent installation in his basement. I remember him putting on a railroad engineer’s hat before powering up his trains.
Uncle Joe upgraded his trains and sold the black locomotive to my Uncle Dan, whose train only went around under the Christmas tree. After a few years, Uncle Dan upgraded, too, and sold that 2026 locomotive and its accompanying cars to my parents. What a surprise to wake up that Christmas morning with a train set around the bottom of our tree.
As my younger brother Richard got older, my parents also bought him a set of Lionel trains. He got that orange Union Pacific. The most significant difference between our trains was that Lionel had figured out how to keep the newer models from falling off the tracks. This invention was called Magna-traction. We had two sets under our tree and added switch tracks and other accessories. Those switch tracks allowed us to send our trains to different tracks. We also got a talking train station that announced the coming and going trains.
When my brother and I grew up, we left our trains behind and forgot about them until my parents passed away. When I pulled the boxes out from a corner of my parents' basement, fond memories came to mind.
Thus began a new chapter in this ongoing model train saga. My brother didn’t want them, so I took them to our new house in Colorado, which we moved permanently to in 1998. The locomotive wasn’t working, so I found a hobby store in Colorado Springs that repaired it.
My daughter Deb, husband David, and my two grandsons, Alex and DJ, came to Colorado one Christmas. We set the trains up on the floor of our loft. I thought the boys wouldn’t be interested in them; they were into the fast-paced world of video games, but to my surprise, they enjoyed this fantastic plaything from my past.
In preparation for moving again, I donated my trains to a charitable organization. Some cars were still in their original (now crumbling) Lionel boxes. I hope they find a home somewhere and give some other kids the joy and excitement they brought me.
I would love to hear about your experiences with electric trains.
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WISHING YOU HAPPY HOLIDAYS AND HAPPY NEW YEAR!
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