"28 train sets produced that year".

:(

Seems like Huwbot is right on track

I think it is wild that I own this set. First of all, while I respect the old 4.5V/12V Train era for paving the way for the 9V greatness to come in the 90s, I gladly point out how crude the designs were back then. Only the red TGV-style train is passable. And yet, I own these points and a set of curved and straight rails, released the same year as the points.

When I was a 10 year-old boy, on one of my summer trips to Bolivia, I found a toy store that still carried all the LEGO themes of the early-to-mid 90s. Being still in the grips of third-world economic status, I figured out these were late-coming imports that then sold for high prices at the store. High, that is, for someone on a Bolivian budget. But for a tourist from the USA, money was no object! Or, it would not have been if I was not a child under my parents' thumbs. I salivated at seeing LEGO sets on the shelves that I had only seen in the catalogs many years earlier. The Metroliner particularly caught my eye, and many of the remaining days of my stay in Bolivia that year were spent pleading with my mom and grandmother to somehow buy it and allow me to bring it back to the USA. Alas! This was not to be, and I went home completely empty-handed.

Fast forward eight years, and now I'm 18. As part of a post-high school graduation family trip, I find myself back in Bolivia, now under more favorable economic circumstances. Amazingly, the toy store is still open and still well-stocked with LEGO sets. However, gone were all the early 90s' classics! Now the sets were all more or less a year to three years old, and therefore, mostly stuff I already owned or didn't want. Despondent at having a piece of my childhood gone, I listlessly looked over the shelves until something unusual caught my eyes: a few silver-gray, moderately worn boxes squeezed absent-mindedly in between some other sets. Amazed, I grabbed them to confirm they were actually real. In my hands, I saw that I had genuine, sealed 4.5V train tracks from 1980! There was a box of straight rails, a box of curved ones, and biggest of all, a box of switching points! Enough for a whole layout!

Now, I still had no Train sets at this point in my collecting, so for a brief moment, I wondered if I might start my collection with 4.5V/12V once I got back to the USA. But I dashed those thoughts when I remembered the Metroliner still exists. Still, these relics were too interesting to leave behind. And being small, they were pretty cheap, even by Bolivian monetary standards. After looking around for more hidden gems (just a couple of BASIC brick boxes from the 80s), I took my retro haul to the cashier to ring up. Being small, they were no problem to bring home to the USA.

Once home, I figured I could make a tidy profit on the aftermarket for the NISB rails, but that had to wait as I started college and hit the books. Later on, I decided I didn't want to do that, as the rail pieces could be useful for MOCs or, at the very least, the foundation for static train displays or (in a larger Town+Train layout) disheveled shunting yards. Time would tell, and sure enough, when I finally got around to building my Emerald Night this year in quarantine, I finally bust open those 1980s vintage rails to serve as a display base for the locomotive.

The points, however, are still sealed! Now, however, as this prolonged comment proves, they are nice conversation piece in my collection, not to mention a valued memento of one of my Bolivian trips and the good times I had in that South American land down under.

Huwbot’s got a point here!

I wondered how long it would take this thread to go off the rails...