Gift from grandpa.

My first locomotive was a cascade green Burlington Northern F unit from Bachmann, my grandpa bought me a Diesel Hustler set when I was about 7 years old.  My childhood fleet consisted of 3 of these identical BN F units.  I still have all three, some detailing, touch up paint, modern chassis under each and tsunami sound. 

They still look like Bachmann toy train set stuff with molded railings and clunky casting, but they are the pride of my humble collection, and always will be. 

My first was purchased by me

Tyco Alco 430 Illinois Central Gulf, with matching caboose, purchased at the Navy Exchange.  My brother had just gotten a train set at Christmas, my Dad had his childhood set, so I wanted my own engine.  When I was going DCC, that engine could not be upgraded, so I gave it and some other stuff to a 4 year old son of a co-worker.

Giving that away allowed me to focus on just the IC portion of my collection, as all of the small ICG went with the engine.

First one

The first loco I purchased with my own money was when I was maybe 12?  I remember it was $25 and it took me a few months to save up.  I believe it was a Life Like CN foobie, but it looked good to me and I ran that thing a lot on my Dad's 4x8 layout.  Unfortunately, it got sold with all the rest of the layout stuff when things went south in the economy.  

My other "first" was when I decided to build my own layout at 16 and bought a Con-Cor Santa Fe loco.  I really liked the yellow/purple scheme and it was there.  It was $89 and honestly, didn't run as well as my $25 HO Life Like.  It was very disappointing.  In hindsight, it was almost certainly dirty track, but it hesitated all the time and was frustrating.  I'm sure I could have made it into a good runner now, but back then, it was just irritating.

Still have mine

An Athearn ATSF GP-7 , circa 1957 , came as rubber band drive and was up-dated with gear drive sometime around 1980. One of these days I'll probably add DCC and tsunami sound to it :> ) ....dave 

Frist loco I bought

The actual first one I ever had was one I got from my mom as a joke 30th birthday present. It was a Tyco set. However, that set off the bug in me and shortly after that I bought an Athern BB undec F7A. I detailed some & painted it.

My First Locomotives

My dad was a programmer for the D&RGW. He had a small train set with horn hook couplers that my brother and I set up at various times as kids. It had a GP38 locomotive.

The first locomotive I bought with my own money was actually four locomotives, an Athearn ABBA set of F3's in Rio Grande livery. I bought them all of about five years ago. I didn't have room to make a layout, so they've been in their boxes since I bought them on sale.

Now that I have the room for a layout, I'll be pulling them, along with the other locomotives I've bought, out of the boxes, and converting them to DCC.

Ugh - was not a good choice

My first out-of-pocket loco was an Athearn rubber band F from America's Hobby Center - was in the $3-4 range.  Came after a "short" 3 month wait, all the ladders broken off, shell cracked, and ran like junk, which of course, it was.  Amazing that it didn't deter me in the least, aside from the fiscal setback of the $3 back in 1965.

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40 years old and better than new.

My First Loco's

My first loco I got was a Dutch Railways "NS 1600" series e-loc made by Liliput that came in a set with 3 flat bed container cars with 3 20-foot containers each. My dad got it for me. I ended up repainting it and renumbering it to "1626" and put the city logo of 'Meppel' on it. It simply had to be repainted: the original color was nearly orange versus the "Dutch Railways yellow" it should have been. I added the horn covers and put more prototypical Faivley pantho's on it from Summerfeld. I then 'abused' it to try my first hand at some weathering.

My first loco I actually bought myself was the Dutch Railways "NS 6474" made by KleiNSpoor. Those handrails are some fragile and bend if you just look at it. No weathering or other improvements were done.

Both loco's made numerous appearances at shows in Holland with the HO-module club "MSG Drechtsteden". The 1626, as light as it is, even managed to once pull an 50 car coal-train (for the RIV guys under us: mix of Fads & Faals cars) by itself. It took up about 1/4 of the mainline we had at this particular show. Afterwards I did have to replace the coupler (it broke) and the anti-slip rubbers on the wheels (completely worn). But it was quite the sight

All this was in the late 1980ies, early 1990's I would say. Now that I've moved to the USA, have the old Southern railroad passing behind my property (now part of Norfolk Southern's "Chesapeake & Western"), and close to hitting my 40ties, the "want to run trains itch" has been growing and growing.