hello all you train guys out there. i am a disabled(bedridden) vet, who cant walk and love trains. i am very depressed and have no one with like interests to correspond with. if any people would like to talk trains, i would be very grateful. thanks jack

Hi Jack... Welcome to our message board!!

Charles Siegel

hello charles, thanks for having a good company all of these years. it is a pleasure dealing with you. jack

what kind of trains are you into

dear ron,i have an accumulation of about 45 locomotives and about 120 passenger and freight cars. i also accumulate the plastic building kits,plasticville, k-line, ihc when they were available, and atlas, with hope of someday, building a layout. i favor the electric type engines, and have lionel, mth, williams and a k-line gg-1. i do not have anything that would be considered highly collectable, but they are all the more commonly available trains, as they fit in more with my budget. i like, illinois central, reading, and santa-fe. weird combo right? but have almost all roadnames.my pride and joy is a mth royal hudson, with 5 alluminum passenger cars (k-line), that i wish i could see run, but so far i can only accumulate them. i have an mth virginian trainmaster. with a soundsystem that i have never heard, also a lionel acl gp-9 with railsounds, which i have never heard. pretty pathetic, huh. till next time, jack. oh i almost forgot, i like the virginian railway also.

Hey Jack,
It's gotta be tough to have all those nice trains and not being able to see them run. 

Have you ever tried Microsoft's Train Simulator program? It was developed by the same team that created Flight Simulator.

You Tube has a bunch of Layout videos. I post shorts of my Cheesy System
so I can share them with family. 

I know there are a lot of impressive model layouts posted on the site. I did a search for Virginian Train master and found this

Some pretty cool sounds from that train.

Please forgive me if I'm out of line, but sometimes practicle application leads to bigger ideas. I don't know what your physical capabilities are Jack but I wonder...

If you took 8 O27 curves and put them on top of turntable with a transformer. Then ran some of your locomotives around on top of your bed table. I wonder what you might come up with once you got those locomotives running around a lttle 27" circle.
You know no matter how large a layout a person starts out with they're always going to figure a way to expand it.

If that sounds like something that might interest you let me know and We'll figure a way to make it happen.

Regards Matthew B. Rogers
Rockledge, FL

hello jack I have been collecting trains since i have been about 12 years old. i used to could not wait for christmas to come so we could set the train up around the christmas tree, or go over my uncles house and watch the fish swim around the aquarium car. I even remember the very first train car i purchased at a local train show a atlantic coast line caboose that cost a mere $10.00. I now have over 400 lionel cars, around 100 k-line cars and a few marx,mth,williams,weaver and some ho and n scale trains i don't have a specific area i focus in on or a specific road name. i o however have all the lionel area 51 alien cars they have produced a childhood fantasy of a fascination of space probably drew me to them.
_RON

dear ron, i received a lionel train from my grandparents when i was 5. it was a santa fe frt set. i used to borrow trains to run from my friends, but when i was 10 i found that my paper route money went farther with ho. i bought my first athearn hustler for 5 bucks at stanton hobby shop in chicago, while i was in the service, i bought many trains in need of repair and i would buy them, but when we needed money, i would be forced to sell them. i have a lot of neat trains now, none of them expensive, and i do not get any particular road name, but i just buy what i can afford, which looks good. i cant work on the trains any more, so i try to get trains that are in good shape, so loooking at economic factors, i buy mostly modern era lionel or williams, although i do have some mth which was more affordable at the time. i love trains and charles gives us a way to get things in a friendly atmosphere, which i really enjoy. thanks jack

i also only buy the trains i can afford i don't really have any of the high end stuff nothingnear those pricey thousand dollar engines or sets, but i think taht its not the cost that makes the train nice its what you like that makes it the best hobby in the world. with the creation of online auctions such as ebay and Charles' website and online auction it has given us collectors and enthuisiasts more of a chance to broaden our collections and get a chance to see and bid and perhaps buy stuff you normally couldn't get at a train show. alot of the shows here in pennsylvania have only the newly cataloged items, i prefer the lionel items from th 70's to the 90's when most were made in this country still.

-ron

dear ron, i really appreciate the info you have given me. my regular e mail address is gvirgin1@verizon.net.....anytime you or anyone else out there would like to talk trains i would really appreciate it. thanks jack