1971 Vertibird... (gave it away to a neighbor kid 2021)
1958 Erector Set...
1958 Erector Set...
Last edited:
Toys you had as a kid and that you kept
- Thread starter vavavroom
- Start date
Amazing if that Vertibird still works after all this time. I went thru about 3 different versions and the stupid spring that was the rotor drive snapped on all 3 at some point.
- Joined
- Nov 16, 2022
- Messages
- 23
That is lovely!
I have the exact same set along with some American Flyer trains...s guage...
I still have my train set from when I was 5 years old but we're inbetween houses in a rental so it's in storage at the moment, can't take pics.
My u control airplanes is the reason I would never trust myself at the control of a plane !i had both of those and loved them...possibly the root of my airplane problem
Lionel was/is O GAUGE, or 1.25" rail spacing.
I say gauge because with a few exceptions, up until about 20 years ago, "scale" was a vague suggestion. Lionel would sometimes make some major dimensions about 1:48(O-scale) but often other dimensions were compressed.
There was a practical reason for that. Many sets shipped with track that had curves nominally labeled as 27" in diameter(O-27), but in actuality around 25.5" center-to-center. The true-to-scale Lionel 700E Hudson steam locomotive from the 1930s needed 6' diameter(center-to-center) curves to actually and stay on the track, and that's with a few tricks to allow it to navigate tighter turns(like blind, or flangeless, center drivers).
About 20 years ago, thanks to some competition from other companies, Lionel really got serious about making true-to-scale and fairly detailed models in some of their high end offerings. Needless to say, they weren't targeting kids setting up their trains on the floor with those.
Around that same time, there was another company making O-gauge products that made a handful of offerings built to 1:64 scale(S-scale). It was an interesting idea and the few they built could navigate fairly tight turns, but I always thought they looked kind of odd.
And yes I still have my Lionel trains. As a teenager I got pretty seriously into collecting 1950s ones(anything modern was out of my reach).
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2006
- Messages
- 29,558
I meant to say “slotless”. It had a tiny steering wheel on the hand control, where you could make the car change lanes while you were racing. I can’t remember the name of it, this would’ve been during the mid 70s.
I have a Lionel "O" steam engine trainset in a box in the basement that I've had since I was 5. It hasn't run in a while, but it was the kind that you put the fluid into the smoke stack and it would puff smoke as it went around. I've been meaning to clean up the tracks and get it going again. I also have some HO scale trains and track.
I still have most of my toy 1/64 trucks and farm equipment I believe. Probably a few boxes worth. Plus I’ll always keep all my HO train stuff. Hopefully I can build a proper track/display someday.
I got one of those for Christmas in 1959. I still have it but I lost the clamshell decades ago.
The toys I still have from my childhood are the few that survived abuse from my younger brother. Most of my toys mother kept long after I moved out of her house. The things I wish she kept were my Major Matt Mason stuff:
- Space Crawler
- Uni-Tread (had a cool two-speed auto transmission)
- Moon Base
- Space Bubble
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Anyone recall - Johnny West? We had (5) boys in the house all raised on cowboy movies and shows..... A few younger brothers still have theirs.
SammyChevelleTypeS3
$50 site donor 2023
Neighbors house had a giant attic. Their dad layed out plywood floors and was going to add an extra bedroom up there. He decided not. Then he turned it into a man cave. He installed a massive electric train set with an HO LeMans style race track that criss crossed the train track at several
spots. We would be racing the cars and have the electric train running down the other tracks at the same time. We spent hours up there. Years later I set up a very similar type thing (smaller scale) in my two son's toy room. I had it on an 8'x4' sheet of plywood so they could slip it underneath the bed when not in use.
A couple I saved. A Wilson football helmet. A hot wheels charger , they had a few electric cars that would run 10 seconds or so, don't have the cars.
A structo cement mixer, trough broke off, most that I have seen also are missing this. Motor still roars when you push it and the drum turns also.
A structo tow truck, the front wheels turn as you press on the cab.
A structo cement mixer, trough broke off, most that I have seen also are missing this. Motor still roars when you push it and the drum turns also.
A structo tow truck, the front wheels turn as you press on the cab.
Attachments
Last edited:
Continuing.
