Trains Gallery

Since before I was born, my family used to set up an elaborate American Flyer toy train set (Made by Gilbert Science Toys in the 1950s) every Christmas. With the joy of the holiday, & the flashing lights of the tree, windows, & the train layout it's no wonder I've always been fascinated by Steam Locomotives. The large heavy, solid cast iron electrically powered toy steam locomotive, actually went "chug Chug" in unison with pumping smoke out the smoke stack. It had a headlight & passenger cars that really lit up, along with lit toy houses, church, signals, & a train station that really talked (It had a tiny 3" record & record player inside). With all the wiring & maintenance involved every Christmas setting up the train layout, & all those old fashioned Christmas lights, plus my mom doing minor repairs on the old vacuum tube TVs of the era, it's no wonder I wound up growing up as an electrical & electronics engineer.

I'm too young to have witnessed the steam era. Rarely, between my birth & about the age of 7 an occasional steam locomotive would come chugging near our neighborhood. Us kids would run out to see it cross the bridge down the street.

When I grew up I bought a used American Flyer, but it was a plastic locomotive. Since then though, I found a cast iron one identical to my family's one. Unfortunately the FWD/standby/Reverse relay was fried, & there were other mechanical problems. I found inside the plastic locomotive, the parts were identical to the cast iron one, so I swapped them. I keep the plastic one looking like new, but is not functional, as it's my parts loco for the older, cooler one. I own an big LGB train too. Maybe I'll post pix of them when I set the trains up next Christmas. They take up a lot of space, & time to set up, so didn't get around to setting them up last year.

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