I prefer O27-sized trains, generally speaking. The size is small enough that they don’t overwhelm an 8x8 layout, and the price tends to be low, as collectors flock to the larger stuff.

While Lionel is the brand everyone recognizes, I buy lots of other brands too. I probably own more Marx than anything else. Marx trains are very reliable, easy to fix, cheap and common, and the tin lithography is gorgeous. A Marx 591 locomotive has a pressed tin body, is easy to restore if it’s really beat up, and should cost no more than $10-$15. A tender, 552 gondola, 553 tank car, and 556 caboose, should run no more than $15 each, so you can have an honest to goodness vintage tinplate train for $75. If you get lucky on price or are willing to settle for something less than pristine condition, you can get in the game for under $40.

I also really like prewar tin litho trains made by American Flyer, Ives, and Dorfan, but they’re a lot less common and tend to cost more as well. Still, if you don’t mind paying $20-$30 per car, you can assemble a nice selection of AF, Ives, and Dorfan cars, and for the most part they run fine together.

Although the trains of my dad’s youth (and the ones that got me started) were postwar Lionel, I don’t buy a lot of postwar Lionel. It’s what everyone else is doing, so it seems like there’s more competition for it, and I like to do things a little bit differently.

I set my layout in the 1940s so I could run Dad’s postwar Lionels without them looking out of place, but most of the time I have tinplate trains on the tracks, and more often than not, they’re made by someone other than Lionel.

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