American Flyer Trains

[charby]

Anyone like/play with these.

After a long absence of buying anything AF, I just won an auction for a set for a steal. Wife is going to be pissed.

Now I need to find me a 4-8-4 locomotive. These things are expensive as nice firearms.

-C

[Stickjockey]

Don't know about American Flyer, but just last December my Dad gve me his old Lionel "O" gauge set from when he was a kid. I used to play with it when I was a kid, and now my son will be able to do so as well when he gets big enough to appreciate it.

[crt360]

I had a cool HO layout when I was a kid.  My dad helped me build a big table platform and it eventually took up about half of my bedroom.  It was fun until it got to where I couldn't really add much more, then I got bored with it.  I disassembled it and still have all of the engines, cars and track stored away somewhere.  I should have started with the N gauge or whatever the smaller ones were.  It was a pretty expensive hobby for a kid.  I'd love to do it again, maybe when I'm old and can't physically do a lot of other things that now use up my non-work time.

[client32]

We had an N scale as a kid.  My dad recently got all the stuff out and started building a layout.  He is now addicted to ebay for this stuff.  My kids love to go there to play with the trains.

[Leatherneck]

I gave up N scale when my vision got too bad and my fingers too fat to fiddle with those tiny trains. I'm getting into G Scale in a fairly big way now. Two 100-ft layouts and running a steam 4-8-8-4 Mogul and a couple of little 0-4-0 yardbirds with an increasing amount of rolling stock. Boy, this is an expensive hobby!

TC

[280plus]

When I was a kid my next door neighbors were 30 something naturalized Germans. This was ~1965 era. They, or I should say the husband Carl had a tiny N gauge miniture German village on about a 4 x 8 sheet of plywood. I mean EVERYTHING. Trees, bridges and tunnels, streetlights, little people, all sorts of little structures. We moved away in early '70's. I wonder what ever became of it.

[charby]

My first electric train was a Lionel set my mom picked up at a garage sale. A diesel locomotive, flat car, gulf tanker and caboose. If I recall correctly the locomotive and caboose were a Rock Island. I think my mom bought it because we had Rock Island tracks in town, but shortly afterwards the railroad went into bankruptcy for the final time. I wish I still had this set, I believe it just sort of fell apart over too much use.

My second set was one I got for Christmas when I was 8. Mom and Dad bought be enough track to have quite the setup on a 4x8 piece of plywood. The locomotive and rolling stock bared my Dad's company, Burlington Northern. I had fun with it until I was 12/13 when it took up too much room in the basement and my layout was taken apart.

Then I discovered N scale and folks were cool with me sizing down to a smaller area. I built quite an impressive layout on a 4x3 plywood layout. Of course to upset my dad over the demise of HO set, I decided to switch to Santa Fe. Pretty much kept building on it until I was 16 or so and got my first car. It was collecting dust so I dismantled it and put it into storage. I think my mom sold both sets at a garage sale before they sold the house to move to Wyoming.

One of friends growing up had a rather larger American Flyer set. The set was so large that it took up an entire room in his basement. This pretty much set my mind to having American Flyer trains some day. So once I discovered Ebay in the late 90's I started buying what I could afford, then I was in a phase of moving a lot so I quit buying it until recently. Now I just bought an complete set, wife wasn't as pissed as I thought she would be.

I have three locomotives, all are 4-4-2 or 4-4-0, I have been collecting steam locomotives and trying to purchase CB&Q/Burlington Route rolling stock. Also on the look out for Rath Packing and Dubuque refers. I am thinking about looking for Rock Island, Milwaukee Road, SOO Line and Great Northern rolling stock.

-C