Heinrich has been in touch with his HO scale Christmas train:
“Hello from sunny South Africa!
Now, we will never have a white Christmas in South Africa, but I can model my European experiences. With the assistance of my darling wife, Susan!
The idea of our Christmas tree layout started back during our Covid 19 lock down.
We had a Christmas holiday booked in the Black Forest of Germany, but soon realised that the world was going to be in chaos and made alternative arrangements.
The holiday plans were subsequently scrapped and we started work on Plan B: Staying home and bringing a white Christmas to Johannesburg!
We took a spare piece of ISO board I had laying around, fixed two radius tracks on it and started planning…. of course, everything had to be designed around the Christmas tree!
Here are some pics of how we started, and pics and a video of the final result.
A big thanks to Heinrich for sharing his HO scale Christmas train – an utterly wonderful Christmas layout.
Hope you enjoyed it as much as me. I do enjoy seeing them, so much work goes in to them, and yet they are only on display for such a short amount of time.
However, as Christmas decorations go, they are hard to beat.
Will has been in touch with his N scale train controller which made me laugh.
He took his inspiration from the movies ‘back to the future’ and Spaceballs:
“I found out that you never really finish one of these things.
But there comes a time when you have to put it down.
A few years back I sent some pictures of a small layout in N-scale, you may remember.
I planned to have it finished in a few years.
It looked something like this:
My circumstances required that I have had to finish early:
Summary – Mostly from scratch.
Buildings are BBQ cedar wraps, soaked for a few weeks so grain stands out.
There are nine outhouses (commemorating my weak bladder), eight tiny people, seven waterfalls, six bears, five trash cans, four raccoons, three dogs, two old rusted vehicles, and an old monitor spewing water onto an ore vein.
The mountain is Capitol Peak and the Knife Edge in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado. There is also the Crystal Falls Mill near Gunnison, built in 1892.
Several references are made to popular movies. Two examples are on the controller itself, Back to the Future III and Spaceballs.
This was my first attempt at doing a train diorama, and if you like it, please take a bow.
You all have been an inspiration to me.
Next?
Maybe a switching game featuring Kennecott Mine in Alaska… If I can stop playing with this one.
Will”
A big thanks to Will for sharing his fun N scale train controller.
I enjoy any layout that has character – and this one certainly has. Loved the nods to the movies.
Bob’s been in touch with is model train Christmas village:
“Al—
Here are a few photos from our Department 56 Christmas villages with trains.
The first is North Pole Village, then Dickens Village (that’s the John Bull from Lionel Historic Rail) followed by Christmas in the City Village.
The villages are all behind glass (final photo) and over the years nothing has made us happier than having to clear tiny finger and nose smudges left by children (a few over 80) laying on the floor and gazing thru the lowest level of glass (home for the North Pole—Santa’s— Village) to watch the trains and animation.
The collection includes every item Department 56 has made over the years (more than 1,000 ceramic buildings plus many more accessories and residents) plus O gauge trains and has finally outgrown the space we have.
So the entire collection of trains and buildings is moving to the Colorado Model Railroad Museum in Greeley, Colorado where, as soon as their fundraising covers construction of an expansion to house the buildings with lots more trains, everything will be on display year-round.
As the Colorado Model Railroad Museum executive director often says, “what goes together better than Christmas and model trains?”
Bob”
“I don’t have a Christmas layout, but I sure have a Christmas memory.
It was 1956; I was 8 years old. We had opened all our presents, or so I thought. I was quite happy with my “haul”. Then my mother said, “Oh, Bob, I think you missed one…” Well, of course, she had snuck an envelope under the tree with my name on it.
Inside was a bit of doggerel my Dad had written. It directed me to some location in the house (it was a biggish house: two full floors, plus a basement and attic). There was a wrapped box, containing the Lionel “Texas Chief”, along with another bit of doggerel, directing me to another spot. There I found another wrapped box, with the “B” unit for the Texas Chief.
This treasure hunt went on for awhile, until I had a whole train.
I said something like, “All we need now is a layout.” Dad smiled and took me into the dining room. There was a completed 4’x8′ layout he had secretly built in the basement over the past few weeks!
Some might complain that we should have had the experience of building it all together, but I was thrilled with the instant gratification of running trains right then and there. I had many hours of happiness with that layout for many years.
It also instilled a love of model railroading in me. I hung onto that whole set until both my parents passed away, and we cleared out the house. I brought it all back to NYC, where I now live, and eventually sold the Lionel to bankroll my new N scale layout, on which I have been working since I retired a couple of years ago.
Robert”
“Hi,
Santa Special: There’s a lot of coal in those 5 hoppers, somebody must’ve been bad.
The D&RG is pulling a couple WP boxcars, returning to origin?
The WP is pulling special duty with Rio Grande rolling stock.
Reindeer must be in the stock car, kinda cramped as one car had to be taken out of service with a bad coupler.
John”
A huge thanks to Bob for sharing his model train Christmas village, and to John and Robert for spreading the Christmas cheer.
Really enjoyed Robert’s story and old black and white picture – really does the capture the joy of Christmas.
