The Grand Central Holiday Train Show
in New York is one of several free displays.
in New York is one of several free displays.
Today at church we got buttons...
ITSOKTOSAY
MERRY CHRISTMAS
Somewhere in the attic I have my brother’s l938 Lionel train set, some cars in original boxes. It is all I have of him, and remember as a child one Christmas eve having trouble getting to sleep, not only from the excitement, but because of the noise coming from the sunroom downstairs. My father, it turned out, played with the train long after getting it set up under the tree.
Precious memories of long ago.
The first holiday season after I married in 1985, I asked my husband what family Christmas traditions he wanted to have. He blinked his eyes innocently and said he always wanted to have a model train going around the tree. I figured it was cute and then he bought an LGB scale train for the tree. Later it kept our little ones away from the tree (the large engine could knock them down), for the most part, and entertained them as our girls used the train, its station and a dollhouse to “move” the family from house to house. Later they had an LGB scale gondola from the train station to “Stair Landing Mountain”. Our tree became the center of their social lives as they were growing up and kids came from the neighborhood to play with the train. As preschoolers, they would see display Christmas trees in stores and ask where the train was.
Little did I know my husband was a covert train collector. He had had to mothball his hobby while getting his education and now it came back full force. Now I have a bumper sticker on my home office file that says, “Pray for me. My husband collects model trains.” LOL Once my husband helped my daughter do a presentation on electrical substations with a HO-scale layout of a neighborhood with houses, factories, a substation, cars, and electric trains, complete with wiring strung from building to poles and a catenary for the train (European style). You should have seen me and my daughter hauling that mini-layout through the schoolyard with boys trailing behind us. Even her male teacher was drooling over it.
There is still a fascination with trains as the train shows my husband assists with always draw oohs and awes from the kids here in California. (I grew up on a Union Pacific branchline and I actually thought all train engines were yellow and gray in the same way that police cars are black and white and fire engines are red. Boy, did I get an education quickly.)
Bump....