Remember the Good Old Days

[Charlie B]

While searching for a daily post I found this clipping I had saved.
     

It reminds me of the days when a penny mattered.

Does anyone remember buying Athearn Blue Box locomotives for $9.95 each from Hobbies for Men, Standard Hobby Supply, or Trainworld?  My model layout in my last home was started in 1984 and Atlas NS flex track was less than a buck a section. I needed 300 sections. Nickle Silver witches were hrd to come by so I temporarily installed brass turnouts (which are still in place today, my second oldest son and a modeler bought the house and I included the layout.) Blue box car kits were (and still are) a fun part of modeling and could be  bought for less than 5 bucks and you coule detail them as much as you wanted. The plastic wheels were great runners and I still have many cars that have not had a wheel change. I actually like them because they attract the dirt from the track.  

Dcc has made it easier to run multiple trains at the same time but this adds to the price of equipment and systems.
Being able to use an old android phone for a throttle has made walkaround easy.  

I  do miss the low prices for model paints and there is no way I have founfd to get around them with a few exceptions (one being a Conrail blue match in a rattle can) 

It would be great to hear some old memories here. 

I do remember going to the store for mom ad getting a quart of milk and a loaf of bread for a quarter, and I got candy with the change. 


Charlie

[hillyard999]

I just watched Terminator 3.
The TX Terminatrix hacks into a computer database over the phone by using her voice. 
What you hear:  dialup modem handshake!

THAT'S been a while.  Talk about old time!

[TMo]

A great topic! The remember-whens of my life are something I look back on with fondness and with sadness.

I told Charlie a few weeks ago that I remember as a 10-year old in 1976 taking jaunts by myself or with my brother from my grandmother's apartment and shopping in downtown Stroudsburg with maybe $10 in my pocket and visiting a good hobby shop, a couple of department stores, a used book store, a music store and an outdoor store all within 5 blocks. I'd always come home with something and still have change in my pocket. Seems to me that a car model, a HO building kit, or a piece of rolling stock could be had for around $5 - $10. Back then I was into volume - probably spent way too much on Tyco and AHM rather than Athearn. There was also a Kaybee Toy and Hobby in the mall that had a set of AHM LVRR GP18's (one motorized, one dummy) that went for $39. I saved for a few months before I took them home. My brother and I were stamp colllectors back then and you could get an envelope (with a big plastic window on the front) of stamps from the Harris company for something like 69 cents. We'd pour over the envelopes at Woolworths every time we were in town.

And where did we get our money? Working for Dad. His going rate on anything was $1 per hour. Mowing, weeding, picking rocks out of the garden, splitting, stacking, cutting wood, helping him with his projects, painting, etc. From 1974 to 1984 that rate never changed. When I started working for an excavation guy for $4 and hour in '78, I was amazed how easy it was to pile up money. Back then the minimum age was $3.35 and it stayed that way until sometime in my college years.

Remember when you used to be able to go to McDonalds AND the bowling alley and still spend less that $15 for the evening?

I can't recall the exact "when", but service stations always displayed the price per gallon in cents UNTIL the price went over a dollar. A lot of stations just slapped a big old "1" at the edge of the sign.

[BR60103]

Back in high school (mid 60s) my best friend had a Mini Minor (the original design). If he wanted to give it a treat, he'd fill it with a dollar's worth of regular and a dollar's worth of premium.
My father also had a smallish car. One of the gas companies was giving a free steak knife with a $5.00 fill up and he couldn't get 5 bucks worth in the tank. The local dealer agreed to give him a knife every second time.
Canadian gas stations resisted going metric for years until suddenly the price went over $1.00 per gallon. They suddenly managed to jump to metric to avoid having to cut a hole to add an extra digit to the pumps. (remember a liter is a generous quart)

I remember a letter to Model Railroader complaining about putting $1.29 "plastic squeeze bottles" behind his $100 brass locomotives.