Christmas layouts from the past

How how about a photo or two of your current layout showing some of the items from Christmas past in use 60+ years later?

Steve

About 6 years ago I was at a train show and saw a standard gauge gondola and caboose. It was the first thing I was drawn to but I didn’t have any other standard gauge.  About 3 hours later, I passed them and they still sat there. I guess I was drawn to them for the simplicity/true toy like features of something that was probably around a Christmas tree 80 some years ago.  I couldn’t pass them again.  At this point I can hardly pass on any 512 gondola that is a loner or a good deal!

The locomotive is new MTH, I like to play Christmas music through the TIU/tender.

The track is new USA track. 

Balshis posted:

There have been several threads this month, about posting your Christmas layout.  But I'm not sure there have been any about posting photos of your past Christmas train layouts.

That being the case, here is a shot of my family's Christmas layout on Christmas, 1956:

That's me on the left, fashionably decked out in pajamas and slipper-socks (always made my feet sweat).  On the right is my sister, trying comprehend her first Christmas.

On the arm of the chair at the top of the image is the Cragstan tinplate Cunningham race car that Santa brought me that year.  Unfortunately the Cunningham didn't survive the move to our new house in 1959.

My father took the picture, and as you can tell, he was more interested in photographing my sister and I than the layout.  In fact, sad to say, no one ever did take a picture of just the layout, for some reason.  But this is the closest thing I have.

You can see our 1033 transformer, beside controls for a couple of Lionel powered 027 switches and the magnetic uncoupling track that's visible just at the layout's edge.  The barrel loader that Santa brought us in, I think, 1953, waits at trackside.  Behind it is a Marx water tower, from a local hardware store.  It still serves the steam locomotives on my layout.

Barely visible at extreme lower right is a bit of of the roof of the passenger station my grandfather hand-built for his Christmas layout during the Depression. It's on my own layout today.  Not precisely O scale, but I'd never be without it all the same. 

The two tank cars and the caboose were part of my first train set in 1951, though the 2026 that pulled them isn't visible.  You can also make out the 027 boxcars (one SF, one NYC) that arrived that morning.  That Lionel box on the floor may have held one of them.  Our #41 US Army switcher would't arrive until the next Christmas.

And yeah, that's an ashtray you see next to the end table.  Dad smoked in those days, though he quit several months later and never picked up a cigarette again.

The layout base itself vanished after I left home and got married, I'm sorry to say.  But all the train equipment and track survived intact, and is in my collection today.  In fact, the 2026 is getting its annual Christmas-season run on my layout even as I type.  Although these days, it has graduated to passenger service and pulls the string of vintage 027 streamlined passenger cars that I always wanted as a kid, but my famuily couldn't afford.

Oh yeah -- Granddad made that little end table, too.  And it's in our living room today.

Balshis, you and I have a lot in common. Maybe there are other Forum members that feel the same way.

Our 1st trains were mostly Christmas presents, and were 027. You got your 1st set in 1951 and it included the 2026 steamer. I got mine in 1953 or 1954 and it included the 2065 steamer. 

We both got the barrel loader and #41 US Army switcher later on. We both did not get a passenger train that we both wanted.

We both moved to new houses in 1959! Both of our dads smoked and then stopped smoking cold turkey!

I may have some old home movies showing the trains around the Christmas tree in the mid-1950s.  

Your photo and narrative brings back fond memories. Arnold

Rescued Trains posted:

How how about a photo or two of your current layout showing some of the items from Christmas past in use 60+ years later?

 

Steve

All right, I will.  My layout is on the basement floor, so it'll have to wait till I do a bit of post-Christmas vacuuming.

Arnold D. Cribari posted:

Balshis, you and I have a lot in common. Maybe there are other Forum members that feel the same way.

Our 1st trains were mostly Christmas presents, and were 027. You got your 1st set in 1951 and it included the 2026 steamer. I got mine in 1953 or 1954 and it included the 2065 steamer. 

We both got the barrel loader and #41 US Army switcher later on. We both did not get a passenger train that we both wanted.

We both moved to new houses in 1959! Both of our dads smoked and then stopped smoking cold turkey!

I may have some old home movies showing the trains around the Christmas tree in the mid-1950s.  

You're right.  But there's at least  one difference between our families -- we couldn't afford a movie camera or projector.  Dad had an old Univex movie camera that he bought when he was in high school.  But it used proprietary film that had been long discontinued by 1956.

And yeah, you guessed it -- I have the Univex in my display cabinet today.

Your photo and narrative brings back fond memories. Arnold

--John

Christmas 1955.

Christmas 1948 Western Pennsylvania (Warren)

jim sutter posted:

Christmas 1955.

Jim, what can you tell us about the rolling stock you ran on that very interesting Flyer layout?

Balshis,

I had the following cars. #620 southern gondola, #625 shell (silver) tank car, #630 Reading lighted caboose #632 L. and N.E. hopper, #637 MKT box car,#736 Operating stock car, #944 Crane car and #945 boom car. For Christmas that year, I received a #474-475 Rocket passenger set in the dull finish.

Rescued Trains posted:

How how about a photo or two of your current layout showing some of the items from Christmas past in use 60+ years later?

Steve

Okay, you asked for it.

As I explained, the only location for which I have layout room is on our basement floor.  Starting from the left, you can see the barn, silo and farmhouse, all built by my grandfather.  When they came into my possession, they were somewhat the worse for wear, so I restored them.  The windmill is probably Plasticville, picked up at a train show.

Next to the right is the Marx water tower that appeared on my family's home layout in 1952.  Then there's a Marx twin-bulb light tower, also a train show purchase.  Keep moving rightward and you see a Bachmann coaling tower, given to me as a Christmas gift a couple of years ago.  Behind it is a Plasticville girder bridge, which was on the original Christmas layout.

Next is the RailKing trolley, parked beside the station.  My Lionel 2026 sits at the station track itself, picking up passengers in three Lionel streamlined 027 passenger cars.

The station itself was built by my grandfather.  There's a Lionel #58 street light on one end, and a #50 yard light on the other.  There's a prewar Marx papier-mache tunnel behind it.

Continuing on, we come to a Plasticville switch tower.  It originally appeared on the Christmas layout in the early Fifties, but by the time I found it, there were small parts missing.  I was able to find replacements at a train show.

In the right rear, among the winter trees (I like to pretend that it's a mountain, and it may yet be, one day), there's a Marx Bubbling Water Tower.  You can't see it in a still photo, of course, but I installed an Evan Designs blinking red LED in its top warning light housing.

The little pond and bridge is a Plasticville unit, and it was also on our Fifties Christmas layout.  I used to keep the pond filled with water during the holiday season, but these days if I try to do that, the cats lap it up.  Beside it is a recent Bachmann watchman's tower.  The billboards (two of them are illuminated) came with my 2026 set in 1951, and I've added to them since.  That's Granddad's schoolhouse at the far right, but more of that in the next picture.

Turning the camera a bit (see below), you can see the schoolhouse more clearly.  When I received it, the bell cupola was missing, so I had to fabricate a replacement with thin wood, then match the original Depression-era paint colors.  It worked out well.

That's a Lionel #494 Beacon.  Our original Fifties layout had a Marx hot-air-driven beacon.  But not to mince words,  it was pretty crappy.  Eventually, the beacon head was somehow knocked awry, and the hot bulb melted the lens.  Replacements were harder to get in those days, so that was the end of the line for the Marx beacon.  The Lionel beacon is far better.

Although I had all the overhead lights on for these available-light shots, I normally run the trains in a mostly-darkened room, where the bubbling water tower and the beacon make more of an impression.

Next to the ready tracks, you can see a small house, also Granddad's work.  I think that was the only one of his structures in my possession that didn't need extensive restoration.

The automobiles came from various sources. 

The KW is one of two that I have, and with a modest layout like this, I can't see ever needing anything larger.  I run all-conventional. Wiring the various electrical ancillaries can be tricky, when there's no way to run the wires underneath anything.

Rolling stock is normally all-O scale, though the 2026 and its silver cars are on a special holiday run.  The fact is, in the beginning, I was originally planning a Postwar layout.  But as my interest widened to 3rs, the layout itself became a sort of hybrid.  Not everything is strictly 100% to scale, but nothing is wildly non-scale, either.

There are other PW accessories (a Lionel barrel loader; a log loader; an icing station, etc.), but I just don't have room for them.  Nor is there any place for detailed scenery on a floor layout.

There is a rough sort of plan to the layout, though.  Starting from the left, it's summertime, phasing gardually into fall, and finally into the winter forest, in the right rear.  Right now, fall is pretty much limited to the area around the schoolhouse, but I plan to acquire more autumn trees to remedy that.  And I'm still working on restoring a little footbridge that Granddad made, but which currently has a broken railing with a missing section.

I guess I sound as though I'm complaining a lot about my lack of space for the kind of elaborate benchwork layouts that I see so often around here.  And it's true that I do wish there was room for more.  But I'm grateful for the ability to run as much as I do.

Oh, yeah, and Granddad did make more structures than the ones you see here.  But my sister has those.