What was your first Christmas trainset?

[Pandora]

A 1956 or 57 Triang Black Princess Elizabeth Trainset , the Princess was a wiper pickup model and not a plunger or roller modfel.   the Triang Jinty set with wagons followed, all in the high warp acetate, and then  an unwanted  S/H 1948 Dublo 3-rail Duchess of Atholl based collection , tin plate wagons and coaches,  the collection  included the  coveted wooden station platforms and buildings.  The Duchess was dated to 1948 , the first year of release, from key  features of the body casting I still have the remains of the 1948 Duchess  but all the rest went into the dustbin in the 1970's. I had little idea of how valuable those station units would become. The Princess set  also went into the bin especially  those awful short coaches which warped.  Collectors will be horrified but possession of those early sets were a source of embarrassment by the mid 60's. Hence their final trip to the dustbin

Edited December 24, 2018 by Pandora

[Welchester]

Not Christmas, but a February birthday in 1966, Tri-ang Hornby Wild West set:

 

http://tri-ang.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/4/0/4740720/published/triang-rs37-wild-west-train-set-2298-l.jpg?1514829737

[Metr0Land]

Hornby Dublo 3 Rail 80054 with 3 tinplate coaches

 

https://www.vectis.co.uk/Hornby-dublo-3-rail-edp13-tank-passenger-set-consisting-of-2-6-4-br-80054-locomotive-2-x-brake2nd-and-1-x-1st2nd-coaches-generally-good-plus-to-excellent-and-track-contained-in-original-set-box-good-plus-containing-instructions-for-running-electric_442474

[NorthBrit]

Early 1950s  --  Tinplate  Hornby Clockwork 2 rail Goods Train Set.

Edited December 24, 2018 by NorthBrit

[Chris56057]

Lima GNER HST set - wish I had kept it.

[Joseph_Pestell]

Xmas 1960: Triang 2-car EMU (sort of Southern which was appropriate to where we lived). Followed 17 days later (4th birthday), by a 3F and some wagons.

[ikks]

Hornby Dublo 3 Rail 80054 with 3 tinplate coaches

 

https://www.vectis.co.uk/Hornby-dublo-3-rail-edp13-tank-passenger-set-consisting-of-2-6-4-br-80054-locomotive-2-x-brake2nd-and-1-x-1st2nd-coaches-generally-good-plus-to-excellent-and-track-contained-in-original-set-box-good-plus-containing-instructions-for-running-electric_442474

Same here, dad set it up on the front room table(just fitted!) I set it going at a speed that would have left Mallard for dead!!. Yep, you guessed it, never quite never quite made the curve and hit the floor with an almighty crunch which snapped of the rear buffer beam.............stuffed my Christmas

 

Mike

[60159]

Given my vintage, it was almost inevitably the Hornby Dublo 3-rail set comprising green Duchess of Montrose, two tinplate blood and custard coaches, an oval of track and a huge heavy Hornby Dublo A3 controller which greeted me one Christmas morning mid/late 50s. An electric train set had been requested as other contemporaries had already aspired to such things. Grandparents and uncles contributed a set of points, some more track and a few tinplate wagons. A 6 x 4 baseboard (with hardboard top!) was provided by an uncle who was a woodwork teacher at a local school. I think it was another two years before Hornby Dublo 2-rail and "super detail" rolling stock. A later Christmas brought a working TPO coach and the line-side apparatus which was about as exotic as it got. Happy days.

[Legend]

Not Christmas, but a February birthday in 1966, Tri-ang Hornby Wild West set:

 

http://tri-ang.weebly.com/uploads/4/7/4/0/4740720/published/triang-rs37-wild-west-train-set-2298-l.jpg?1514829737

Always fancied the Wild West set, mainly because Casey Jones was on the telly at the time. The good old Cannonball Express . Still not got the set . Must keep an eye out on eBay . The interesting thing of course was that the 3F , Jinty, Diesel Shunter and the Western loco all used the same chassis! Edited December 24, 2018 by Legend

[Bilbo]

The Princess Elizabeth set With the 2 maroon coaches , an oval of track and the battery box that needed 2 large lamp batteries. Bought in John Hall tools 1955 I think. 

[Ragtag]

1995, an Intercity 225 which went back to the shop faulty.

 

Replaced with a Eurostar which also went back faulty.

 

Finally managed to add a few extra £ and get the Twin Train set: http://www.hornbyguide.com/item_details.asp?itemid=1441

I had a go at detailing the class 47 some years back as a first project which now needs a bit of a revamp. I'm currently modifying the body to fit onto a newer Hornby DCC-ready chassis.

The pacer is also being detailed and should be ready to go around the time Realtrack release theirs...

[34theletterbetweenB&D]

Hi Just a thought out of the 18 replies I think  6 got new and rest got recycled/ purposed as the modern idiom has it...    

It was only when we had a change of neighbours that I was made really aware that new toys came in boxes. Stuart's thing was cars, he had them all stored in their original boxes, (With the 'Lone Star' die casting operation about a mile and a half from our then home, the die cast road vehicles I had were probably all factory seconds or similar. I have come to suspect that this operation leaked like a sieve.)

 

None of this mattered. We built the trainset anew for every operating session on the front room parquet. On the weekend Pa would sometimes play (reel to reel) taped excerpts from a Transacord recording on his handbuilt stereo system to sync with the train movement, and this was transcendentally wonderful.

[Butler Henderson]

1995, an Intercity 225 which went back to the shop faulty.

 

Replaced with a Eurostar which also went back faulty.

Such was the case with too many subsequent presents - for example I was the recipient of one of the original 9Fs when released in 1971 - it did not work , neither in fact did any others that the shop had which something I always bear in mind when reading someone complaining that their new XYZ is faulty and so where all the others the shop had; its nothing new - a faulty batch come off the production line together due to a solitary slack worker and end up largely in the same large box which then gets sent to one specific shop.

[D9020 Nimbus]

With me, in (I think) 1962, it was a Triang "Britannia" and three Pullman coaches. There was also a secondhand "Jinty" with the earlier Triang couplings and some wagons, along with a double-track oval of Series 3 track on a 6' x 4' board—also secondhand I think. Sold it all in the early 1970s...

Edited December 24, 2018 by D9020 Nimbus

[phil-b259]

My first wasn't a set as such - my dad bought a Britannia ('Morning star'), a couple of supposedly Maunsel carriages and a load of individual track pieces topped off with home made controller.

[doilum]

I don't recall 82004 ever breaking down. Perhaps because I was shown at an early age how to clean the wheels using lighter fuel and cotton wool. By age 11 I could do the full James May Reassembler and had a Triang wheel cleaning brush. This useful bit of kit is still in use, the bristles splayed out for 29mm back to back. Sadly, I loaned out 82004 to teenage friend and forgot to reclaim her. Hence the ongoing attempt to do homage in the senior scale.

[Pacific231G]

Mine, in the mid 1950s, had a Hornby Dublo Dutchess of Athol with two or three coaches and a couple of wagons. The layout was HD three rail tinplate track mounted on a 5ft x 3ft baseboard (hardboard braced with battens) The layout consisted of an oval, a reverse loop and a siding all operated wire in tube from a lever frame made up of HD point levers. Even as a four or five year old I soon realised that the reversing loop could only be used once going forward and without a terminus was then useless but I  never got round to altering the layout which my Mum had bought second hand from another of the teachers in her school.

.

Apart from its relative lack of operating potental, what I most remember about it was that it was utterly reliable- far more so than any subsequent layout- , the locomotive moved as soon as you gave it some volts every time so I can see why some people stuck with three rail or went for stud contact long after two rail had been perfected. In the end it was sold in favour of Tri-ang TT-3. I never got very far with that partly because, with type B track, it never worked that well and partly because my next big Christmas present was Meccano (my degree is in Engineering so that clearly did some good)

Edited December 25, 2018 by Pacific231G

[peanuts]

1977 or78 Hornby GW branch set 0-4-0 tank three four wheel coaches and an oval of track and a small mains controller .supplemented with a pair of points and enough track for a loop .quicly added to with a pannier tank and a number of waggons from the 2nd hand bin at Norman Wisdens

[tractionman]

My first train set was one of these

 

https://goo.gl/images/atvz9r

 

I must have been given it when I was very young as I don't remember how old I was, probably around three in Christmas 1970, but I kept the loco for years afterwards. In fact I think I've still got it somewhere.

 

Cheers,

 

Keith

[leavesontheline]

Pretty sure it was one of these ....

 

[JJGraphics]

Mine was an Ever Ready 3-rail London Underground Train, which I received in 1951, if I remember correctly.

 

Had a lot of fun with that, but as soon as you got the train running, the track popped apart. When you clipped it back together it popped apart somewhere else. My Grandfather eventually made a basic table out of plywood with a softwood frame and screwed the track down

which made it a lot more reliable. That was my first "layout"!

 

John

[Nearholmer]

Technically, I’m still waiting.

 

Despite a lifetime playing with toy trains, I’ve never actually had a train set for Christmas, but, if the assembled RMWebbers fancy having a whip-round, there’s still time this year!

[Trainshed Terry]

From what I can remember it was a Hornby GWR Pannier 0-6-0 with some freight wagons.

 

But I can't find a image of the set

 

Terry.

[drjcontroller]

Christmas 1965 (I was 6). Triang B12 61572 and (I think) two blood and custard Mk 1's with an oval of track. It had a lot to answer for!

Edited December 24, 2018 by drjcontroller

[spikey]

P.S. Spellchecker does not like rooves; which I thought was the correct plural of roof.

 Nope - hooves is the plural of hoof, but roofs is the plural of roof.

 

Mine was the Hornby clockwork "LMS" 0-4-0 tank controlled by two rods sticking out the back of the cab with knurled brass knobs screwed onto them, with IIRC three wagons (one of which was a McAlpine side-tipper), a circle of track, four straights, a point and a buffer stop.