...bringing my "Christmas Train Mondays" to a close for this holiday season.
It's a Frankenstein creation, using a shell from one friend, a mechanism from another and repaired with the technical help from a third. The paint has some minor dings, many were removed by carefully scraping the blemish with an Xacto knife until the white paint came through.
A fine runner, it will pull my "Spirit of '76" themed train for many years to come...
I do have two of the five original Lionel Freedom train cars, but they don't take too kindly to 14" radius curves...
...from a Keen Christmas 1920 at shorpy.com...the image is exceptionally large at the link, go there to check out the detail and work that went into this particular garden...
I grew up with Christmas gardens, my beloved had never heard of such a thing 'til our first Christmas as husband and wife, 1991...
This one was built onto a Life-Like expandable styrofoam over and under layout we had purchased at an auction for $5, the trolley was a AHM product, the cars by Tootsie Toy and Hot Wheels and the buildings we did from shirt cardboard and acrylic paints.
Picked up at last weekend's swap meet...the graphics are up to Athearn's usual standard of excellence and unusual for a car of this type. I'll be putting a Kadee at one end and a horn-hook at the other so that it can be used as a transition car...most of my better running locomotives having already been converted to knuckle type couplers long ago.
...and a custom made Christmas train made by Brian over at the Tyco Forum running at the Southern Christmas Show in Charlotte NC on the Metrolina Model Railroad club's portable layout...
It's that time of year again so I thought I'd dig up one of my most requested "How tos"...
Because THE TREE makes for about an 8' tunnel that's a bear to keep the track clean in, I brought back an old favorite for track cleaning. Using Masonite, I cut myself pads 1 3/8" x 2 1/2" in size. I laid out a center line at 11/16" lengthwise and cross lines at 3/8", then epoxied two 1 1/4" drywall nails centered on the cross lines. While hardening, I drilled two 1/8" holes centered into the bottom of my car 1 3/4" apart. I then set the pad lengthwise on the rails, placed the car over the nails. That's it, there are no fasteners as the pad needs to freely travel up and down. Leave it in your regular consist and you'll never have a problem with dirty rails or wheels thru the holiday. It's also easily modified for Thomas' Clarabelle coach by shortening your measurements. The second pic shows just how much dirt "clean" track gives up after 20 laps.
For rare tinplate, I came up with the following to avoid drilling into a family heirloom or pricey collector's item. Using the same basic pad, I added a flexible plastic arm attached by sandwich gluing the pad to the arm with cardboard. I added a small lead weight to the end of the pad away from the arm. Then, at the other end, I sandwich glued two powerful magnets copped from those blinky pins sold at Wal-Mart (they come two to a pin) and placed another set on the car floor. Heirloom is now safe and track now gets cleaned as evidenced by the pad after ten laps.
The final pics show them in action. The train's wheels now stay clean and I no longer have to clean the rails themselves on a daily basis as I had to before.
Some may wish to color them on the sides and tops with black magic marker to hide them.
We used to have one at Liberty Road for a short time, but that was many years ago. I don't recall it being a Christmas one though, I think it was just set up by one of the guys on a whim in a spare room.
I miss my days as the son of a fireman, running around the engine bay like it was our own playground. I'm saddened at times that my kids won't grow up with those same memories. I don't imagine they allow the access to the equipment nowadays like we had back then.
Most of us in the hobby can trace our interests back to these Christmas gardens. The firehouses in Baltimore made it a full contact sport in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up, each house tried to outdo, outshine and out animate each other to the joyous sensory overload of many a kid.
Just a Believer who happens to model trains on a very tight budget, providing a place to showcase my own model work as well as the work of others, regardless of type. Considerations for posting are always welcome. Please check out the modeling links I've put together as well...
Less than God could not have borne your sin so as to put it away; but the infinitely glorious Son of God did actually stoop to become a sin-bearer. I wonder how I can talk of it as I do.
It is a truth scarcely to be declared in words. It wants flame and blood and tears with which to tell this story of an offended God, the Heaven-Maker and the Earth-Creator, stooping from his glory that he might save the reptiles which had dared to insult his honor and to rebel against his glory; and, becoming one of them, to suffer for them, that without violation of his law he might have pity upon the offending things — things so inconsiderable that if he had stamped them all out, as men burn a nest of wasps, there had been no loss to the universe. But he had pity on them, and became one of them, and bare their sins. Oh, love ye him; adore ye him; let your souls climb up to the right hand of the majesty above, this morning, and there bow down in lowliest reverence and adoring affection, that he, the God over all, whom you had offended, should his own self bear our sins.
Though thus God over all, he became a man like unto ourselves; a body was prepared for him, and that body, mark you, not prepared alone, and made like to man but not of man. No, he was not otherwise fashioned than ourselves, he came into the world as we also come, born of a woman, a child of a mother, to hang upon a woman’s breast; not merely like to man, but man, born in the pedigree of manhood, and so bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh, yet without a taint of sin. And he, in that double nature but united person, was Jesus, Son of God and Son of the Virgin; he it was who “bare our sins in his own body on the tree.”
From a sermon by Charles Haddon Spurgeon entitled "Death For Sin, And Death To Sin," delivered November 16, 1873.
Men, protect your daughters....
“Picture this: Some 17 year old snot nosed punk comes over to take out your daughter, and you say, 'No you aren't worthy of her.' (Immediately everyone is up in arms over your 'judgmental' and 'harsh' position, and for 'breaking your daughter’s heart.') Ok, so let's put it another way now: You have a beautiful, brand new $200,000 Ferrari Testarossa in front of your house, and a snot nosed 17 year old punk comes over to take it for a spin. Would you hand him the keys? See, what your problem is, is that you value a car more than your daughter. Men, protect your daughters!”
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