Saturday, January 25, 2020

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun -- Your Favorite Toys as a Child

Calling all Genea-Musings Fans: 

 It's Saturday Night again - 

time for some more Genealogy Fun!!


Here is your assignment, should you decide to accept it (you ARE reading this, so I assume that you really want to play along - cue the Mission Impossible music!):

1)  Jen on Auntie Jen's Family Trees posted "Throwback Thursday Favorite Toys" on 23 January, and Linda S. thought it would make a good SNGF topic.  I agree!


2) What are some (one or more) of the toys you played with as a child?  

3)  Share your favorite toy(s) with us in your own blog post, in a comment on this blog post, or in a Facebook message.  Please leave a comment on this blog noting where your conjectures are located.

Thank you Jen for the idea.


Here's mine:



I am sure that we started out with a Lionel O gauge Train Set like the one shown above in the early 1950s.  We usually set it up in the sun room of our upstairs apartment where my mother worked.  After my brother Scott was born in 1955, my brother Stan and I were moved into the sun room and we continued with the train set, usually at vacation time.  We always ran it on the floor.  At Christmas, it circled the Christmas tree.


Over the years, we added a lot more track, more train cars, some scenery, another engine or two, and a bigger transformer.  The extra track allowed us to run the track all around the sun room and the living room, and we made several routes that crossed each other.  The extra engine let two of us play with it at once.  It soon became a contest - who could run their train faster, and who could smash into the other train.  It was great fun.  We ended up just running the engines because they would go faster and were indestructible.

I finally left home for good at age 23, but Scott still had the train set running, off and on, until about 1970.  My father boxed it up, and after he died in 1983 I became the keeper of the train set (I was the oldest son).  We had two daughters, and it wasn't until the first grandson came along in 2003 that I even thought about the train set hiding in the boxes in the upper shelves of the garage.  When Lucas was born, I gave my daughter the train set for Lucas and then Logan, and they still have it on their garage shelves.  My grandsons haven't played with it yet.  Perhaps they can sell it and finance their college education with it.

When I was a boy, San Diego had a model train store - Frank the Train Man on Park Boulevard.  When Stan and I were early teens, we saved our allowance to buy train cars and track, and they were Christmas gifts from our folks too.  Frank's store closed only a few years ago.

We have a model train display next to the San Diego History Center in Balboa Park, and when my grandsons Lucas and Logan were young and visiting, we would take them there and enjoy the setup and the scenery.  It still runs on a regular basis.  Maybe I should take Charlie there (he's 5 now) to see the trains when he visits us!  A starter O-gauge set costs only $300 still.


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8 comments:

Lisa S. Gorrell said...

It's sad that your grandsons haven't had a chance to play with trains. I still have trains I got as an adult and am a member of a local model railroad society in Walnut Creek. However, I didn't write about trains; rather the toys I did get as a child (my brothers got the trains, of course).

https://mytrailsintothepast.blogspot.com/2020/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your_25.html

Lois Willis said...

Here's mine
https://loiswillis.blog/2020/01/26/sunday-afternoon-genealogy-fun-your-favorite-toys-as-a-child/

Liz said...

Here's mine:

https://gatapleytree.blogspot.com/2020/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your.html

Janice M. Sellers said...

Here's mine!

http://www.ancestraldiscoveries.com/2020/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-your.html

Linda Stufflebean said...

Here are mine: https://emptybranchesonthefamilytree.com/2020/01/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-76/

Marian said...

Dope-slapping my forehead: A replacement transformer?!? A bigger one? Why didn't we think of that? Ours was pretty finicky.

Bill said...

Had a set exactly like that in the 1950's in Pennsylvania. Dad sold it at some point, long after I'd left home. Thanks for sharing the memory!

M. Diane Rogers said...

Here's my post - Saturday Night Genealogy Fun - Childhood Toys: https://saggers.one-name.net/miscellany-surprises/saturday-night-genealogy-fun-childhood-toys/
Randy, My baby brother got the trains - but not till he was a bit older. Funny, as I love real trains!