I have a really great neighbor, Fred, across the street that is a electrician and helps me out when I do something really dumb with the house....which happens way more than I would like. Fred has helped me out many times and this year his wife was diagnosed with cancer again and so they are doing their best to cope and deal with what life gives them. Fred and his wife never complain, yell, anything and are so quiet and good hearted it just does not seem fair for them to go through this.
Several weeks ago I was over at his house asking for a little house wiring help and we got to talking hobbies and trains. After a short time Fred mentions he has his boyhood train which is a postwar Lionel as it turns out and he finds it and tells me it has not run in years due to some stripped gears. It looked pretty bad but right then and there I knew what I had to do. I asked Fred if he would not mind letting me take a look at his engine and take a brief inventory of what he had and Fred agreed. Fred has a 2065, no tender, one hopper, and one caboose. I took the engine home and started working on what I could do. A couple of weeks later at my club meet I found a recently serviced 2065 and tender for a $100 and then asked a friend if he could go through the engine and swap over the drive train to Fred's shell and check everything. I also found an NYC gondola to add to Fred's set.
I gave my friend a tinplate station as a thank you for the engine service and found a 1033 transformer for him to put in a new cord and service it. I had a new starter loop of Fastrack that I found while organizing some trains and a spare Marx tunnel. Every train loop needs a tunnel, right? Oh, and I pulled a nice postwar boxcar from my collection to give to Fred also. So today I have everything ready except that I needed to clean the trucks on his 2 pieces of rolling stock. I waited until I saw his garage door open and went over to ask him to borrow the cars to clean up. Well Fred had decided to clean those 2 cars and cannibalize a tanker car he did not tell me about for the couplers so I asked to take the tanker car so I could get couplers later to fix that one. I did not realize how excited Fred was and so I told Fred I had something for him.
I went back home and then brought Fred his train, the gondola, boxcar, transformer, tunnel, and loop of Fastrack. I cannot even explain the joy I saw in Fred along with the tears of happiness seeing his boyhood train restored with a tender, new track, some extra cars, he loved the boxcar, and the tunnel. Fred was speechless, gave me a big hug, and told me how the person that gave him this train had passed away a long time ago and how much this meant. I was so blessed to be able to do something nice that involved the hobby that I love so much.
My challenge to everyone else is to find that person with that broken train and help them out since it only takes a little effort and pay it forward!
) So I brought my Pennsylvania Flyer set into a LHS to see how much of a trade in value the man behind the counter would give me. Well it was about Christmas time and a man and his son came into the store to look at trains. I overheard the man saying that they couldn't afford the set that the boy wanted, looking over my shoulder, it was the same flyer I held in my hands. I told the store man he could keep his money (he was kind of a dick anyways) and I walked over to the kid and handed him my set with a few spare Fastrack pieces and a pair of switches. I've never seen a smile bigger. The dad almost started crying when he asked how much he owed me and I responded with "Merry Christmas, sir, and to your son too."
