My wife spends a lot of time in arts and crafts stores this time of year, and that means I spend an equal amount of time at those same stores wondering what I can put into or onto an existing O gauge to make my own Christmas cars. I already have a healthy fleet of my own Christmas cars made by Lionel, MTH, K-Line et al, but I still like the challenge of seeing how many cars I can put together for less than the price of a new manufactured one.
The big arts and crafts stores have plenty of miniature stuff that works well in or on gondolas, hoppers or flatcars. But there's some other good stuff to be found elsewhere too. This year, I found…
• These little rocking horses that fit perfectly on a Menards flatcar. Used twist ties from my dry cleaners as tie down straps.
• Found these decorative Christmas lights in the floral section atop what are called floral picks. Popped them off the flexible stick they were attached to and instant payload. That box of old C9 Christmas lights in my garage would have also supplied a fun, if more muted, Christmas bulb load.
• These two were the result of digging around elsewhere at the arts and crafts store. For the first, I used the clear plastic "ice" I found on the jar filler section of the store and lit it with a string of battery-powered, multi-color lights. For the second, I used a bag of multi-color plastic beads (from the bead section) over a string of clear lights. (The two-battery box of the light strings took up so much space that I discovered I only have one hopper large enough to accommodate the box, lights and load. So it was used twice.) In retrospect, anal retentive me would line the inside of the car to hide the light bleed, spend more time arranging the light string for more even concentration of light, and figure out a more efficient way to turn the lights on and off without messing up my load or light arrangement.
• I envisioned this one as candy cane/peppermint sticks stacked up like a log load and either glued together or tied down. But every suitably sized peppermint stick I found (and there weren't many choices) was broken. Instead I used the peppermint stirrer sticks I found at a kitchen supply store. And yes, those stirrer sticks cost more than the value of this PW car, but…)
• A load of plastic peppermints I found in the miniatures section at Michaels. Note they have holes in the sides so they're likely designed to make garland (?). Real peppermints would work too (if you don't have pets!). Used floral wire as my tie-down.
• Inspired by a visit to our favorite Mexican restaurant oddly enough (where it looked like they essentially gift-wrapped their existing artwork). Maybe the fastest and easiest DIY car I've ever done. I simply raided the wife's stash of wrapping paper and wrapped the trailer/container like I would a gift. If you've got several TOFCs or containers and 3-4 different wrapping papers, you can make an entire consist of Christmas cars fast and easy.
Things to remember:
Light strings with 2 batteries will fit in far more O gauge cars than those with 3 batteries.
If you have a string of battery powered lights that's too long, the voltage is low enough that you can safely snip off the end for a better fit.
There are plenty of holiday colored fillers to be found, but if you want to light them from below as in the above, make sure they're translucent. Many are not.
Think my total spend this year was about $50. That got me 6-7 different Christmas cars I can roll out for less than the price of a new Christmas car and, after the holidays, I can put these cars back in regular service. Hope it inspires you to try your hand at some DIY Christmas cars too…
Merry Christmas, y'all!
