My sister and I played with Lego a lot when we were kids. We had a small playroom, and my dad built a table for our Lego train and roads etc. that took up one whole end of the room.
Brickfactory has got scans of all (?) the Lego sets and the building instructions, starting about 1958. Link via MetaFilter, of course.
I found some of the sets my sister and I had: my favourite house (another photo), because it has hinges in the middle. That way, it was one whole house or two halves in which you could play. We also owned a motor, a police boat (the set is from the seventies, back when the minifigs didn’t have movable arms and legs yet!), a petrol station, a doctor’s car and quite a few sets from the Fabuland series.
We often played with this train, complete with transformator and points (ours were manual though).
We also inherited a lot of bricks from my father. Of course I don’t know the complete sets because his parts came in one big box, but I’m sure he had the letters and numbers and probably some of these houses – left, middle, right – because I remember the plates used for the roofs and the windows and doors. These sets apparently came out in 1958, when my dad was ten years old. It looks like the bricks back then only came in white, red or clear.
Ah, those were fun times… :-)
Hello, I was on Gizmodo today and they have a post on The Best LEGO Sets in History
I looked at the pics with joy and recognized some of the sets I had as a child (i’m in my early 30’s now). Then I googled “Lego boat” to find the boat I had and fell on your post. You had the same police boat with “non articulated” characters. I also recall it had an electric motor underneath with a weight to keep it straight.
Anyway thanks for making my day !