• Hi Guest!
    If you appreciate British Car Forum and our 25 years of supporting British car enthusiasts with technical and anicdotal information, collected from our thousands of great members, please support us with a low-cost subscription. You can become a supporting member for less than the dues of most car clubs.
    There are some perks with a member upgrade!
    **Upgrade Now**
    (PS: Subscribers don't see this gawd-aweful banner
Tips
Tips

The End of an Era in Roanoke

Share this page

Celtic 77 said:
Crazy stuff!! I too had some Lionel stuff, the we moved too many times and I then took up HO trains. For S&G we'd go to tar beach and take some beat up old plastic model, a tube of Testors glue, dribble it on the wings and...God forbid.. using a pack of matches light it up and watch it crash in flames!!! Ah, the 80th St memories!!
Click to expand...

I have a small amount of Lionel stuff - some was in my father's basement (and I was forbidden to touch it) when he passed away, some I bought because although the actual train itself was in OK shape every inch of track was rusted and pitted beyond use. So I bought enough track to make a couple loops on a 4x7 foot plywood board (no room for anything bigger) and a handful of extra cars just to have some variety - if I bother setting up a Christmas tree it can go in the middle of the board but usually it just sits on the floor of the living room with 1 corner actually running under a cabinet and a small table since I am really tight on space (i'll move the small table if I feel like doing a Christmas tree).

I did take the locomotive to someone to repair because for all the years my father would set it up and run it he cursed heavily at it because sometimes it would run and sometimes just sit and hum...he was convinced the switch on top was a simple forward/reverse selector (Lionel O gauge is AC power for those who havn't messed with it so no simple polarity reversal). Once I had the chance to mess with it in detail I realized it was actually an enable/disable switch for the solenoid-activated directional control. Getting that fixxed made it work perfectly.
 
If anyone is looking for a train to run around a Christmas tree, you can't beat a G scale starter set from LGB or others. The G scale track is big and made of brass. When I was a kid, I had a Lionel set and it would derail sometimes. G scale trains can bet set up on a wood floor and they will run forever without derailing. They do need a little room, a circle will take up about four feet. A new LGB set can cost $300 to $400 but I see them on Craigslist and other sites all the time. Bachmann makes a similar set and they are not as high quality as LGB but they are a lot cheaper. If you have kids, they are a great way to go.
 
Back
Top