For the past few days I have enjoyed many of the members of our group reminising about their first , and later, purchases of electric trains, especially American Flyer. From all of their accounts I have concluded that I was perhaps the most fortunate of all in that I lived about 35 miles south of Chicago, IL and was introduced to American Flyer at Gilbert's showroom and warehouse in that city just before Christmas of 1949. I had graduated earlier that year from USAF pilot training and had flown an A-26 into Midway Airport for the Christmas holidays. I decided to catch the streetcar downtown to the Loop to do some Xmas shopping for my two younger brothers and somehow found the Gilbert store. Of course I was in uniform and when I walked into the lobby of the store I was greeted warmly and immediately given a royal tour of the showroom and surrounding environs. When I mentioned that I was interested in purchasing one of their electric train sets I think I was told, although! I'm not certain of this, that they did not sell to the general public and I was referred to Marshall Field's Department Store some distance away. My memory sort of fades at this point about the specifics but, in any event, I was invited to go upstairs to their shipping department where I was introduced to the cutest little brunette who escorted me to a section of the store where other girls were boxing up the various Flyer train sets for shipment to various retail or distributor outlets as I recall. I won't bore you further with fuzzy details except to say that when I left the Gilbert facility very late that day I had two things in my possession; a beautiful Hudson heavyweight passenger set with all the accessories and the name and telephone number of that cute brunette ! No, I never did get the brunette but that 1949 Hudson heavyweight set resides in my trainroom as I type this, minus its' original Gilbert motor but replete with one of Steve Blackburn's new can motor! conversion kits. My younger brothers enjoyed that set for a number of years until cars, girls and other things superceded their earlier interests. When that happened my blessed mother insisted they carefully wrap the set in its' original boxes and put it away in the attic until the first grandson arrived. Well, one of the advantages of being 10 and 12 years older, respectively,than my brothers was that I got the train back when my first son was born. When his brother arrived six years later we already had our first layout and , for a number of years, we continued to add to our Flyer collection. Sadly, those damned slot cars and midget motorcycles captured my sons' interests and the trains went into storage for another , extended period of time. But three years ago they all came back out and , when the layout effort was finished, that gorgeous Hudson heavyweight passenger set was the first to make the run around the big loop ! Hope I haven't bored you too much.
Regards, Russ [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] S-Trains list sponsor: http://www.americanflyertrains.com All the Flyer you desire...books and accessories too! To UNSUBSCRIBE from this list send a note to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
