Santa brought a Digitrax Super Chief sytem along with some other train items. Guess I will have to get to work building that layout now. I think for now I will use the room I have my 4x10 gaming table (historical simulations for the politically correct, wargames for the rest of us) set up in to throw down some track to get familiar with DCC. Yes, I am blessed to have a room for the games and a larger room where the layout will go. Probably won’t start on the layout for real until springtime unless I decide I can afford Sievers benchwork
All I wanted was a paint booth for christmas. i dropped the obvious hint before my birthday and nothing. Since then I have dropped hints about bad(caugh caugh) fumes bad for (caugh caugh)lungs, need to vent fumes. But out of 8 people they did not come through. Sorry lungs[xx(] any last requests. So I guess painting all those stripped locos will have to wait until the weather warms up in frigid ohio. I did get 1-liolel o scale single dome tanker. It was a chrome bordens dairy one from before I was born in 76.
All in all it wasn’t bad. I saw my family and my getting too old grandma[:(][sigh]. We also went to my wifes familys house where I had to play nice with my (add explicitive here) father in law all day. What a drain that was but the wife was happy so I guess I could do it for her. From her family I got the 8th pair of around the head earmuffs that I can’t stand to wear(and will now get donated to a local shelter again) and a third smoothie maker blender, a fourth set of stainless steel bowls and a fourth pair of candle stick holders. [sigh] gift cards from home depot would have been great as we are doing some updating in our house.
Got some cash from grandma and my parents so I will use that at the greatest hobby on tour in march at the cleveland IX Center. Maybe that or at the next train show here in medina.
Got a pack of #11 blades in my stocking, and a very stylish denim shirt with an embroidered WM logo… That ad I stuck into the Ladies’ Home Journal paid off!
The best part was having all of us in the same place at one time for the first time in months!
The jolly fat one left a X-Acto knife set,a X-Acto deluxe craft tool set,a needle file set and a jewelers screw driver set…I actually needed these as a lot of my modeling tools are well worn or missing…
She was very proud of making the find last Summer and has been anxiously waiting until Christmas to see my reaction. I didn’t let her down! The best I can date these Car Inspectors Lanterns from the NYC is around 1900. Give or take a few years. There is a member of the R&GV Museum who is a major collector of these so he may be able to pin point them closer. One at least appears to be in working condition. If it doesn’t leak, it will get some use on special occasions. Luckily she found out that it would lose most of it’s worth if it was to be painted and decorated, and she was nice (smart) enough to leave them alone…
I also got a couple of tools from Micro-mark, a book of Early Train related postcards, and a Museum Shirt which hasn’t arrived yet.
A 32-inch HDTV for the sunroom downstairs. Well, it doesn’t sound like it’s train-related, but the other big TV shares the train room with my layout. So, now I can work on my trains while she watches “The Drunken Escapades of Britney and Lindsay” or whatever that show is that seems to be all the channels, all the time.
And Reaper Madness! My sister picked up a selection of individual Preiser figures, including the Grim Reaper, who already is on my layout. So, I’ll have to find another spooky location, perhaps even a small graveyard. Other than that, there was a seated engineer, so I put him into my 0-6-0, and added another crewmember to the other side, and a crew to the Hudson while I was at it.
I note you decided to go with Conrail blue pj bottoms dave. [:D]
The only train stuff under our tree was 2 $15 giftcards to my LHS and 15 caboose industries ground throws. It was a great christmas this year, we’ll see what I wind up getting with those giftcards.
I got a Marklin DB class 111 electric passenger engine (see my avatar) from my wife, i am glad she was able to find it because it is a out of production model.
Some fat guy in a red suit left me a Symphony 77 sound system for my little HO X-mas layout. I am having a ball blasting this thing and scaring the heck out of my cats, LOL…
My wife surprised me with an Athearn TRE (Trinty Rail Express) set including the engine and three cars. This is my first DCC ready engine. We live about a mile from the tracks that run between Dallas and Ft Worth. So, we get to hear the TRE many times a day.
Then, my adult children gave me an IDC 2-10-2 plus Tender Santa Fe. Also DCC ready, so now I have two and its time to start some serious reading about DCC.
Well having 3 year old twin daughters and another little girl on the way Christmas priorities change and it’s all about them… Santa was good to them.
I did get a nice new Eddie Bauer Jacket and some Craftsman tools but my favorite thing was $$$$$. Ebay here I come for 2 locos and my first HO layout track…
Merry Christmas and a Happy and Promising New Year to All
I got a brand new Bowser L-1 Mikado kit (which has kept me in the basement for hours), a Walthers NYC Pullman Diner and 10-6 Sleeper (which are my best passenger cars yet), and a Lionel NYC passenger car ornament. I got a few other things too (like some RAM for my PC), but that was all the train related stuff there.[:D]
The top two pictures here - My Christmas - are my suprises - an IDC 2-10-2 Santa Fe and an Athearn TRE (Trinty Rail Express) commuter train. This one runs between Dallas and Ft Worth and we live in Irving about a mile away from the tracks. An elevated railway is being constructed and some day we will no longer hear the trains as they rumble past blowing their whistles.
My other gift from my wife is her interest in the layout and a desire for me to add an extension to have a Carnival setup. Now thats something hard to turn down. My LHS had a set of IDC carnival items, so some of those became one of her gifts.
Back in September, my wife and I attended the Narrow Gauge Convention in Portland OR. I purchased a number of specialty products at the dealers tables. At the Wild West Scale Model Builders’ table I purchased a laser cut false front store and some laser cut shingles. Some of my purchases were put in an underfloor compartment in my rental car which I forgot to retrieve at the airport. After calling the rental company, all but the Wild West purchases were found and returned to me. On Christmas Eve, my wife wanted me to open one present first. To my surprise the kit and the shingles were in the box. My wife had kept a card from Wild West Scale Models and together they figured out what I had purchased at the convention. The dealer not only redid a kit that was destined to be discontinued, but added another kit at no charge. My wife also picked out a third kit which she knew I would like. Now that was really a special gift Merry Christmas, Peter Smith, Memphis
Santa was his typical self this year and brought me everything I wanted and far more than I needed. I’ll have to speak with him about it., But until I do, I’ll enjoy the 2 Atlas MP15DC gold units, a set of Athearn Trinity spine cars, a set of Kato Gunderson Maxi-IVs, a Kato C44-9W, a set of Athearn 30k gallon ethanol tank cars, a set of Athearn Maxi III well cars and another 8-10 assorted freight cars that he dropped off this year.
