Some of you may have heard my tale of the Christmas of 58, when my Dad was stationed in Newfoundland with the USAF. He had a Lionel mail order catalog from an East Coast dealer given to him by a neighbor who was big into trains and had a spectacular layout in his basement in the Base housing. Dad ordered a nice set from the catalog, but when the shipment came, much to his dismay it contained the wrong set. It came with a handwritten note from the dealer who apologized for being sold out of the set he had ordered, and would he please accept this, the next better set, in its place. Turned out to be a top of the line Super O set with the NW "J" and smoking caboose, an AEC Atomic Disposal Car, Log dump car, Bonanza Beechcraft Airplane car and the Horse Car/Corral. I actually discovered him setting it up late Christmas Eve, at which point I came to realize who Santa really was...
Here some 50+ years later, I was sad to have not so good an experience with an Internet dealer who shipped me a set I did not order. An honest mix-up perhaps, but the follow-up and subsequent frustration in trying to resolve the situation left me very disappointed. You see, I was spending Christmas with my Sister and her family and my Mom (Dad passed away years ago), and I wanted to surprise her with a nice modern Lionel Victorian Christmas RTR remote set. What we had received, delivered days earlier to her house, with a message from me to not open until Christmas Eve, was a rather obscure Pere Marquette set that did not include track nor transformer. Anticipating the joy of opening the box and setting up this nice set, I was tremendously let down to discover the mix-up. Needless to say I wanted to exchange it right away and even went as far as trying to go to the return address location a hundred miles away the day after Christmas. Without going into the gory details, some of which I detailed in another thread, I was unsuccessful in my quest and remain unable to work with the vendor as they appear to be on "vacation". After trying to reach them at the return address in Fairfield NJ, my wife and I went to a couple of stores, including Grzyboski's in Scranton later that evening to see if they had one, but alas they had sold out before Christmas. We were just trying to salvage the holiday gift giving season, but to no avail.
Now it turns out that the whole episode generated some interesting dinner conversations and I got to see a side of my sister I had not known after all these years. You see, she had always wanted to play with that 58 postwar train, and when my older brother, whose gift it was, had moved off to College, it was I who had instigated getting it out every Christmas. But by the time I went off to College, my Dad had grown weary of setting it up himself and no coaxing by my sister could get him to do it.
Turns out my sister has a real interest in the old Postwar set and would much rather have a set with "Nostalgia" value as she puts it with dump cars, lights, and horses... Just so happens I have a large PW collections and had even gone to the extent of rebuilding my brothers original set which he now retains. So it turns out that Santa now has a new mission to fulfill for next Christmas and that is to see that my sister gets the train she never had in childhood. It makes for a good project for me and hopefully I can turn the disappointment of this past Christmas into something of a renewed spirit of Christmas this year. Merry Christmas everyone,
