I never owned any train stuff but this looks like a lot of fun play

Sweet memories! Though I never owned this one cause pocket money of me and my brother at that time wasn't enough for all our Lego priorities (still an issue, 35 years later), I remember building freight stations, loading platforms, etc. ourselves with all the other Lego we had.

Another beautiful old train set that I wish I owned.

I understand that the times for those sets are over, now it's the conflict-in-a-box strategy with mostly licensed sets and/or connected to the TV series. Still, I miss these harmless sets of 1980s. Even in Space there was mostly exploration and not Wars.

I really, really wish they would be the trains sets back. Along with roads, homes and all the other elements that made having a Lego town so much fun.

I loved these kind of sets - it’s a shame you now have to buy an entire train set to get any kind of lineside structures (or buy partially parted out via eBay/BrickLink) rather than being able to grow and expand your railway at your own pace (not to mention the greater variety and choice).

This has a heavy dose of nostalgia going for it, though I preferred some of the later offerings like the vehicle transfer platform...

I came across this set when I was getting into Lego Trains a few years ago. I thought it was really cool. Train sets are usually fairly expensive once they're retired, and this one is no different, plus this one seems to be pretty rare, as far as complete sets for sale. So I ended up "bricklinking" it... in other words gathering the parts to build it from spare pieces and ordering what I didn't have. Fortunately as an old set it uses a lot of fairly common parts mostly, except for things like the red tipper pieces, the white doors, and the clear 1x4 tubeless bricks, those are pretty rare (the latter is unique to this set oddly enough). It's neat that Lego still uses the same yellow claw piece, so that one was easy. I'm glad I built it too, it's a great set.