Today I went to the grocery store and there, standing out front, was a guy in a Santa suit ringing a bell. And as I was walking from the car through the parking lot, I found myself drifting back to Christmas past-- long ago when I was five…
Back then Christmas was a wonderful, magical time full of colored lights, mysterious boxes wrapped in crinkly paper, trimming Christmas trees and singing Christmas carols. And somehow the universe began to slow down around the middle of December and the days grew longer and longer the closer it came to being December 25th. Until finally it was Christmas eve, which was always the longest day of the year, regardless of what Poor Richard has to say about it. The minutes and hours ticked slowly by. Eventually the big family dinner with all of the relatives was over, the Christmas carols all sung, the eggnog drunk, and the fire burned down to the embers. And finally it was time to put out the cookies and milk for Santa and for all sleepy five year-olds to head for bed, tucked in by mom and dad in anticipation of the coming morning.
I awoke very early on that Christmas morning, before anybody else in the house. And in the wee early dawn I decided to go into the living room and have a peek to see what Santa had left for me under the tree. So quietly I tip-toed down the hall, around the corner into the living room and there, under the tree, was a brand new O-gauge train, with a shiny black steam engine, some freight cars, and a aqua-green (Penn Central) caboose. I can still remember the PC logo on the side of the caboose. It was all set up in a big circle on the floor, the wires were
Yes, Christmas was a magic time. We had 3 of them - first at my Mom’s mother’s place on Christmas Eve, then later that evening at my Dad’s mother’s place, and finally the next morning at home. Despite the large families on both sides, there were few children, and my sister and I were the youngest. We got lots of stuff. I suspect my parents bought and wrapped most of mine, because so many were for my Lionel layout.
Having a layout of my own, there was none under the tree. So, after a short but polite interval, the trains were whisked away upstairs. I spent the day running my new trains.
I remember getting the Lionel rocket launcher, the NASA-like one with the gantry and flat car. It was, as I said, magic. My two fondest childhood passions, trains and outer space, came together that day.
Ahhhhh good ole Santa Claus… Do I remember those days as a kid. Eagerly awaiting for Christmas to arrive. We certainly were not wealthy by any means, but some how me and my sister always got lots of presents. I think I got my first Tyco train set when I was about 7. I set it up on the kitchen floor and was amazed how cool that thing was. Every year after that I got a new train set, even better than the one from the year before. Eventually I got a piece of plywood and tacked the track down and then I got a mountain tunnel and a bridge.
I sure miss those days, that’s exactly what got me back in the hobby after all those years, I’m trying to re-capture the moments on Christmas!
That light you saw in the caboose was the headlight in the engine. That’s the problem with a small circle layout. Put a few cars between the engine and the caboose, and the engine wounds up right behind the caboose. Next time, use some easements! [(-D]
Lot of Christmas memories, but can’t say there’s any mysteries.
There was a Lionel O-27 layout under the tree for the first few Christmases I can recall. With track laid on bare plywood it really made some noise. There were seveal Plasticville buildings, including the obligatory church and a skating rink which was just a mirror with cast lead figures that would scale out about 10 feet tall. Maybe there was a mystery - why didn’t it set the tree on fire? That thing sparked like the 4th of July. And back in those days, tinsel was made of a soft metal - some sort of tin/lead alloy I think. Strands would fall on the track and get pretty hot. When I was 4 or 5 the train was set up in my bedroom (less fire hazard, probably). My sister now has the train and still sets it up every year.
When I was 6 I got my first HO train, a Varney set with the Docksider loco. My dad built a 4x6 layout that was in my bedroom. That following Christmas, sitting in front of the tree, not wrapped up, was an Athearn F7 A and B unit and three passenger cars in Pennsylvania RR colors. Pennsy was the most prevalent RR in our neighborhood. That F7 with the old Hi-F rubberband drive rolled so quietly you could hear the thumps as the wheels hit the plastic frogs of the track switches. A very memorable Christmas and a truly happy time. After 50+ years, I still have the B unit, and the passenger cars which were repainted when I was a teenager but they are in bad shape.
About 20 years ago the LHS was having a sale on Athearn passenger cars. I couldn’t resist picking up several, and some yeasrs later painted and decaled a P2K PA1 A+B set in PRR colors. The cars are nowhere near prototypical for the Pennsy - corruguated sides as well as being Athearn “shorties”. But this is my tribute train for that Christmas.
My model railroading got started with a train around the Christmas tree, and after a while, I thought of a way the name Santa Vaca relates to Christmas. I will tell you in advance it is entirely made up.
The Legend of Santa Vaca
In one of the early Spanish missions established in to convert the Indians, a priest was telling his congregation they should give to the church even though they didn’t have much to give. He said that God can use our gifts more than we know, a
The original post also asked “Have you ever modeled any sort of “Christmas”-oriented theme on your layout?”
I am actually now working on a section that will be winter scenery at Christmas time. I have a two houses and the church from the Hallmark “Sarah Plain and Tall” collection which have Christmas decorations on them. They are a bit small - look like closer to 1/96 or 1/100 scale but that helps with creating some distance illusions.
What I am also discovering is that winter scenery ain’t easy. I have tried the “snow goop” formula from Dave Frary’s book and found it quite hard to work with. I am now experimenting with cheap acrylic caulk for shaping the snow drifts. I also discovered it takes a lot of thought to plan where to put snowdrifts and plowed snow, and how to contour the scenery when the ditches and low portions are full of snow. I’m now on about the fourth time across an area about 2 square feet!
Not to be a total contrarian, but the whole Christian concept of Christmas is totally foreign to a country where the inhabitants are almost all either Shinto or Buddhist. Then there’s the little matter that I am pretty much fixed on the month of September - a little early for Christmas.
That said, Christmas actually is a pretty big deal in urban Japan - but it’s the commercialized, Santa Claus, give everybody presents Christmas, not the celebration of the birth of Christ Christmas. It’s not a big deal in either form in a back-country area steeped in the ancient traditions. The big deal is New Year’s Day.
Somewhere in the back of my Maybe, Someday folder is the end of the narrow gauge village of Miyukidani (Beautiful Snow Valley.) But it’s a ski resort, not a Christmas scene - and it’s way below the operating tunnel boring machine on my priority list.
To me the holidays always meant trains. As a child growing up in the "50s we always had an American Flyer 4-4-2 and a string of cars running beneath the tree. On many occations there would be a new car or accessory under the tree on Christmas morning. One year, a whole new set! That was a frustrating Christmas for me, as the old trains had link couplers and the new train set had knuckle couplers, so I couldn’t intermingle equipment! (At that time I was too young understand the concept of making up a transition car, with a link coupler on one end and a knuckle on the other.)
As I got older I became increasingly more frustrated with my AF equipment. All the model railroad stuff in the hobby shops was HO. I couldn’t buy new rolling stock, or even structures for my layout. And then we moved to a new home where there was no room for the layout, and the trains went back in boxes. About that time however I heard of a fascinating new development. Something called N-scale. Something small enough that I might actually be able to have a layout again. So that Christmas I bugged my parents for a new set of trains, this time N scale trains.
Many years, and many N-scale layouts later, I was newly married. Browsing through the local Toys-R-Us I discovered something new on the shelf. Something called the “Lionel Gold Rush Special” in G-scale. I then decided it was time to reinstate the custom of trains under the tree, only this time with large scale trains. That began a decade long family custom of adding a new train item each Christmas. To the point in fact where the holiday layout began to take up most of the living room! And then my wife put her foot down. The G-scale equipment went up for sale on eBay.
Luckily about that same time I came into a set of Bachman On30 trains, a gift from reltives. Along with a set of winter themed bui
Well, I was about 8 when a neighbor had a garage sale down the street. My {younger} brother and I found a WHOLE collection of Lionel trains in boxes under the table for sale. we set up and played with them a bit. the owners asked if we could go talk to our parents about buying them. MoM said “weait til your father gets home” SO we did. She allowed us to play with them until he came home {figuring I guess if we were really attached to the trains dad would buy}. He studied them and said “no, I don’t think so, tehy are all a bit rusty, but we can ask Santa at Christmas”…I still believed in SAnta, but just barely,a dn was crusheda t waiting til then. SO at Xmas time, I too, snuck out of my room in the middle of the night and to peak into the LR. THERE, next to the Tree, was a Marx 027 2-6-2 and some RR cars on the tracks with a water tower and a station and some plastic auto cars. A coaling tower and a few other RR stuffs were in packages under the tree! ANd that is how I got “into the hobby” many many years ago. {though I would take a break from 20 til 44 and come back into HO instead of 0/027 as a kid and N as a teen}
For Easter the following year, we{ My bro and I} got a diesel switcher from the Easter Bunny!!
ANd the following Xmas I got some switches and extra track and my brother got a used F-series diesel painted in EL colors. Th
When I was 9 years old, my parents bought a new house. It is much bigger and the most important part (in a kid’s mind) was that my sister and I would have our own rooms. The living room is fairly large and we had no furniture in it at the time, just the Christmas tree. I remember we had gotten all of the presents unwrapped and my dad said that I had one more, but I couldn’t see it. The area under neath the tree was empty. He went into his bedroom closet and pulled out a large, but rather flat box. It was a Life-Like train set. I couldn’t wait to set it up and play with it. It was a blast.
About 6 years ago, the locomotive finally wore out. I replaced it with an Athearn RTR Dash 9 and have been in the hobby since. I fully retired the train set and stored it in my closet. I will probably make a display case for it someday, but for now it is tucked neatly and packed safely in a box.
I recall Santa bringing my first ever Lionel 0-27 set, which I now know to have been one of the cheapest sets they ever offered - the Lionel Boxcab 520. I suppose I was about five. I can even remember opening the train set box for the first time. It had a sort of cross hatched pattern and was labled Lionel.
A number of years later there was The General set up under the tree (they had gotten a slightly damaged one cheap I guess - no box, it had just one passenger car and the engine has some slight damage, possibly a demo back when so many stores had layouts set up for Christmas). And well after I stopped believing in Santa and had switched to HO, I still remember when the AHM/Rivarossi N&W 2-8-8-2 showed up, painted for Pennsy (which had some N&W 2-8-8-2s, but not Y6b).
Seeing the looks on kids faces at this year’s Trainfest in Milwaukee, particularly at the Kalmbach booth where they had a G scale train under a decorated Christmas tree, I wager to say that for the right child a train set still makes the perfect gift.
I played rough with my first trainset. Almost all of it is gone or destroyed or ferociously weathered by 10 year old hands. No idea who made the thing. It had a Chessie F unit. I remember one of the supporting presents I got was a 50’ plug door box car with DORITOS on the side. I loved that boxcar so much and I have no idea whatever happened to it. About a month ago, I spied the very same Doritos boxcar neatly in a box at a show. It took a lot of effort to talk my girlfriend out of buying it for me.
The only surviving artifact of that day is the Tyco Truck Terminal. I love that building so much and have oft been tempted to get ahold of a fresh one.
It was Christmas Eve, 47 years ago. I still remember the day as if it were just yesterday. Unlike in the US, Santa already comes on Christmas Eve, so there was a young boy, eagerly waiting outside a locked living room door, waiting for Santa to arrive. All of a sudden, a little bell was ringing - the first sign of Santa´s arrival! My brother and my sister started to sing Christmas carols and I was supposed to join in, but the only sound I could voice was a loud “croak”. Expectation and tension was running way too high for me to sing. Minutes became hours for me, but then, finally, the bell rang a second time, the door was unlocked and us kids rushed into the room. Look at the Christmas tree, my mother said, but my eyes were searching for my present. Disappointment grew as I was unable to see a train running underneath the tree - a Christmas gift I had so dearly wished for. But there, there was a big package with my name on it! Unwrapping was a matter of split seconds. It was a Marklin starter set, just an oval of tin plate track, a 0-6-0 tender loco and two tin plate passenger cars. Immediately I started to unbox my treasure, my eyes shining as bright as the star of Bethlehem. Before I could assemble it for the first run, my mother called us for dinner, a meal I was unable to savor. At last, the dinner table was cleared and I put together the track, connected the power pack and ran my first own train. I must have fallen asleep over running the train, a tired but happy boy.
If my parents had only known what they had started [;)]
