In November, It’s the Crunch of Leaves, the Smell of Gravy, and Trains!
When I was a kid growing up in a Baltimore rowhouse, there were many things to anticipate with the coming of the holiday season. The cooler weather brought the colorful leaves on the trees to be sure, but just as predictable were the appearance of spectacular window displays at the big department stores downtown, and the Christmas Train Gardens at fire stations all over town.
For me, the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving always meant a very special time was just around the corner. I recall coming in the back door from Sunday School each week, and looking up as we passed through the laundry room. Usually, there were two pieces of heavy plywood suspended there, but with the coming of November, I knew that soon they would be taken down. Those sheets of plywood were the foundation of our own Christmas Garden.
Then one magical Sunday, we’d come home, the plywood would be gone from the ceiling, and the smell of old cork and dried up lichen (a natural growth that would be dyed green and used for trees and bushes) would fill the air. The Christmas Garden would soon be open for its annual run!
Baltimore is a city that has strong roots in German tradition. At the turn of the last century, a narrow vote in the City Council determined that the business would be conducted in English, and not German, although a majority of citizens at that time were of Teutonic heritage. One of those traditions, was the Christmas Garden. Germans have long undertaken the display of miniature villages, usually surrounding a Nativity crèche. In later years, the advent of electric lights and motorized model trains added a merry twinkle and clatter to the displays.
My dad would pile us in the car and we would make the circuit to the various fire stations that still had train gardens set up… Dundalk, Towson and Cross Country Boulevard near Mount Washington were favorites. W
I grew up in Chicago ('44-'67) and “the trains” were as much a part of Christmas as anything. While most everyone I knew with “trains” had them up from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, that was enough to give those of us destined to be life long model railroaders a start in the hobby. For us “older folks” in the hobby, I would suggest that most of us got started due to that Holiday gift of Lionel, Marx, or an American Flyer trainset.
By the way, I would give most anything to have pictures of my childhood trains and layout; you are very fortunate!
What an excellent story to share with us. It brought back memories of the early 40’s when I was 5 or 6. A gentleman who lived across the street from us, a milkman as I recall, would put up a Christmas display of Lionel trains in a small bedroom. In the evenings and on Sunday afternoons, my friends and I would be allowed to sit and watch his trains run through a small village and mountains made of that old mountain paper with shiny sparkles all over it. This was where my love of trains began. As well as the window displays at Sear’s and the other department stores in Pittsburgh.
I DO have pictures, I just need to find a way to get them digital, they are mosty fading old Polaroids. My first exposure to model traisn was the Christmas I turned two, apparantly my parents felt I was now big enough not to wreck things. I stil have an 8mm silent movie showing me at two running trains around a loop under the tree - HO, Tyco 0-6-0 tank engine. My hand on the throttle, speeds a bit high.
Later on when we moved to a Larger house, now was the time of year we began setting things up. At first it was a simple 4x4 loop, plywood on sawhorses covered with green felt. A loop inside the houses at the middle was home to a Tyco trolley, the outside loop was for the ‘regular’ trains. A year or two later, my one of my Dad’s Christmas presents was an Aurora Postage Stamp N scale set - the Lil Donkey switcher and train. Soon a 2x2 foot extension appeared, with a simple loop on N scale track with a single passing siding, the inner track going partway up a pier set with a bridge in the middle. This partially overhung the HO layout to provide a tunnel for the HO trains. I think we set itup this way for 2 years - after burning out each N scale turnout motor 3 times each, the N scale was packed away. The HO then expanded to a full 4x8, bolted together in the middle so we coud take it apart for storage. I distinctly remember the first year of the 4x8, I came down in the mornign before school, or perhaps it was a Saturday my Dad had to work, and tried to run a train, as I noticed he had finished the complete outer loop of track the night before. My train got halfway around and stalled. I poked and prodded around and found the insulated joiners and the extra feeders - I connected those and now I was runnign trains. I was probably about 6 at the time. Each year we added more and more stuff, the ‘final’ 4x8 had a large mountain in the corner with a track halfway up that ran a Lionel HO ‘bumper car’ back and forth, and a cable car ran from the summit down to the Old West town
I was up at 8am today so i could run the ho scale layout i set up in the depot museum here from 10am to 3pm. Today was my town’s “Christmas opener”, which happens on the 1st Saturday after Thanksgiving. Among other things it includes is a parade, and the turning on of the town christmas lights. Besides my model trains up front, there was kids crafts in the back plus meeting with Santa from noon til’ 2.
It’s the 4th year i’ve done it. The first time i just had 4 tables to work with. The 2nd time was my trains on the layout i’m building for the museum in the ticket room which can run 3 trains, plus some set up by 2 other guys in the front, the 3rd time the other guy had trains up front again (including a christmas village), and i made an extension of the museum layout and attempted to have 6 going at once, but it was almost a disaster. Plauged by derailments, the “automatic interlocking” i set up messing up, and of course kid control. This year the other guy couldn’t do it, so i got to use the 12 X 13’ board he used before. After getting it assembled i made the plan. This time it would be 3 loops (dual mains and a “branch line”) the branch crossed over the other 2 on a giant mountain i made (for the layout last year), then crossed the inside main at grade where the 2 mains split. Once again i tried my auto interlocking, this time it worked a little better (it consists of 2 Circuitron optical detectors connected to relays and signals, and whichever train gets there first gets the R of W, and the other stops automatically, then resumes when the other one clears). Allthough the sensors were still sensitive to light. Also had a yard area. Even squeezed in a small oval of N scale. In the center of this was the US-1 layout, which crossed the branch at grade and on a bridge. Also had an Ertl Farm Country tractor dealership and my small collection of 1:64 scale tractors in the center.
this time i had 2 new things. O
My rich uncle had a movie camera, back in the good old days, a real rarity then…it captured me opening up my Christmas gift, being the most expensive Lionel steam engine ever produced.
That scratchy old movie was replayed for me, when I was almost an adult. I know the look on my face just SCREAMED OUT: “DON’T ANYONE THINK OF EVEN TOUCHING THIS STUFF.”
Quite embarrassing to see the unbridled GREED and SELFISHNESS that was so evident. But, what a dream come true…and over the next few years, each birthday and Christmas meant the gifts of “accessories” would be waiting for me to tear through the wrapping paper like a rabid wolverine…the white reefer that had a little guy who tossed milk vats out the door onto a platform…tiny black cows with plastic “hair” on the bottom, that would react to the JIGGLY effect, (which the push of a button would create) and cause the cows to move in the maze of a pen, and up a ramp into and back out of a stock car.
This was BIG TIME special effects stuff, in the mid 50’s, boy. Today’s kids would GUFFAW at such primitive junk, I’m sure.I wonder, now, how many kids ATE the little pills you were supposed to insert into the engine’s smokestack, to get the little puffs of smoke–hoping to be able to blow out the smoke from their throats…I wasn’t one of them, I’m happy to report.
I had so much fun with that stuff for so many years, that I found it quite awful to read that such equipment was denegrated as “TINPLATE”–as if merely touching it rendered you unsophisticated and “unclean.” It was expensive, but still within reach of most children to own a small layout you could spread out on the carpet, and kept the interest of kids a LOT longer than the junky toys I watch today’s little ones opening up, and cast aside, after 30 seconds.
to all of the above!!!
