Yup! I was the third and last child - a third daughter. For my 4th Christmas my father got me an electric train set which ran around the Christmas tree each year. I was not allowed to play with it until I was quite a lot older. It is now in boxes in storage above my closet in the bedroom.

my dad was always fiddling with model H trains. i used to be able to tell the difference just by looking at the different model sizes! when we lived in kansas and had a basement, he had a piece of plywood with the train tracks and everything. i remember him putting together houses and stuff. it looked great!

The train with which I was gifted were made just prior to WW2 - which makes them older than I am, in case anyone wondered - and are HO gauge. My Dad put a heavy duty rheostat on it and that little engine still goes. The last time it was out, David was in college and brought a fellow Geologist home with him for Christmas. It was lovely and the kids had such fun with it crawling around under my 7' tree. I have engine, coalcar, refrigerator car, gondola, boxcar and caboose on my train.

HO, i was thinking about that last night and that's the model size i was referring to! my dad had several sets of those things and my brother fiddled with the n scale. we had a train that we got our son and put it around the christmas tree too. it was way bigger than ho and i don't think we kept it.

(thought it might be the gauge - a mistype, huh?! *hugs*) There is a little wee gauge one which was about 1/4 size of the HO but not sure if it made any longer. They were adorable! I never did see one up close, so I have no idea how well-made it was or if it was just a cheap toy. Anyone familiar with that one? Those N gauge huge ones were not very good for home use. The layouts which did them justice were just too huge.

i thought the n gauge was smaller than HO....hmmmm....my brother's were smaller than dad's......

There was a huge gauge with a scale up in size at least twice that of HO...ugly to me. Wonder what it was. How were the n gauge ones?

You know, since we are having no help but our own and the master of the Spring is building the second Ark or whatever, we just might need to hunt up info in the web *gasp* Guess everyone has lost interest (I am feeling really bummed because I cannot get my boat anchor lashed up - no counter space. And the house male just looked at it and said "WHAT is THAT?! ...and left the room.)

will do some checking......

Good...I would if I knew where to look (trains-r-us?!)

N is nine millimeters track width. The perfect size for small installations... There is something smaller (z ?), but the models lose too much detail in that size.

Thanks, Alexander. They must be the ones I am thinking of. Very cute and precisely what we need in the smaller homes of today. I actually thought about getting one for under my tree...but I do not need more stuff!

thanks for clarifying the scale, alex!