My mother, Margaret Schubert Harrison, grew up in a railroad family. Her father, my maternal grandfather, William (Bill) Schubert, worked for 42 years on the Pennsylvania Railroad out of Baltimore, Maryland and retired, as a freight conductor, in 1953, two years after I was born. My mother had a love of trains from as early as she could remember. Her father, on his days off, would take her to his work place and show her trains and other equipment. He took here on train rides, as he eventually did for me, to Washington DC, Philadelphia and New York. As the dependent of a railroad employee, my mother got from her father, free passes to ride the railroad. She would take herself and younger sister, my aunt Peggy, to New York for shopping trips to Macy's or a show at the Radio City Music Hall. During the summers when she was off from school, my grandfather would get free passes for my mother to take cross country vacations on her own. She saw much of the United States on these sojourns. When I was younger, my mother would share with me and my younger brother, her black and white photo albums showing shots of Yellowstone Park, the Grand Canyon and Hollywood, California among many other places.
My mother also liked taking me and my brother Roger on train rides during the summer months to both New York City and Washington, DC. As a result, in addition to my love of trains, I also developed a life-long affinity for the city of New York. The New York World's Fair in the early 1960's was a a good reason to take train rides. The Pennsylvania Railroad in its declining years of existence offered very greatly discounted fairs on a special excursion train from Washington to New York for the Worlds Fair via the Long Island Railroad from Penn Station to Flushing, LI. On the way back, to Penn Station, NY, my mother would walk with us for a short while and take us to dinner at a Horn and Hardart Automat. By the time I was about thirteen years old, from watching carefully walking with mother and taking the initiative to study maps of the city in my spare time (I love maps!), my mother became confident that I could find my way around Manhattan. I now know mid-town Manhattan as if it were my front street.
After the closing of the World's Fair, the Pennsylvania Railroad, desperate to keep passenger service alive, offered one day per week, Ladies Day ultra discounted round-trip fares to New York where the lady's fare was $10.00 and children under 16 years of age rode for $5.00. Several times a summer, my mother would give me and my brother money for train fare plus enough spending money for the day to visit New York and see the sights on our own. For me, the train ride and sights along the Northeast corridor trip were as much fun as the city of New York, itself.
As my favorite baseball player Yogi Berra used to say, "It ain't over 'til it's over!", I now rewind to the Christmas of 1954 when Santa Claus left me my first Lionel train set. It was a 736 Berkshire steam locomotive, freight cars and a caboose on a loop of track on the floor around the Christmas tree. It was the perfect present for a young railroad junky who, thanks to my grandfather Schubert, thought steam locomotives were the GREATEST THING ON EARTH!!!!! Over the years, Lionel trains were as much a part of our Christmas holidays as the decorations and the tree.
Each Christmas, the trains layout grew from a tree encircling loop to a 64 square feet, "L" shaped basement "Christmas garden" (as it was called by Baltimoreans) on the basement floor which had a second train set for my brother and was powered by a ZW transformer. My mother loved the train layout and enjoyed seeing Roger and I playing with it. During the year, when the trains were in storage for the non-Christmas season, my mother would take my brother and me on occasional Saturday shopping trips to the Broadway Market in Eastern Baltimore city to buy fresh meats from the butchers' stalls. These trips also included a stop at a local store on Fleet Street called "Funk's Variety", a junky place that sold a hodgepodge of things including Lionel trains and other things like Plasticville buildings. Roger and I would each select a building or a box of figures to add to the Christmas layout.
One year, after Roger and I took over the design and assembly of the the train layout for the holidays, I decided that I wanted to, using the Lionel trestle set, have the elevated section of the track to look like it was passing through a track that was cut into the side of a mountain with a backdrop of mountain peaks along the wall behind it using Life-Like mountain paper. That weekend, my mother took Roger and me to the market and Funk's afterward where we bought enough mountain paper for the project. My mother was good with crafts. She read the instructions on the Mountain Paper wrapper that said the paper could be molded in shapes if it was wet.and would hold the shape when dry. She then proceeded to wet the paper in the basement stationary tubs, shape the paper into mountain peaks, put it on the long work bench to dry, climb into the layout and install it the way I wanted it. It turned out beautifully! Though my mother did not live to see our train layout that my son and I built and enjoy, she and my father did live to see there only grandson, Christopher for most of the first year of his life.
Now Chris' mother, my dear wife Terry, carries on the maternal support of our train hobby. Over the years, Terry suggested and hosted our yearly, 2-day Holiday train layout open house for invited friends and family. She really enjoys hearing many of our friends relate stories of when they were growing up with, now, memories of there parents assembling "Train gardens" for them at Christmas. Some of Terry's gifts to Chris and me for Christmas or birthdays included buildings and accessories for the trains. Terry was also a GREAT help when we would assemble our holiday train layout for our pop-up train store at Richardson Farms in White Marsh Maryland! Our current layout is partially dismantled for cleaning and remodeling of the layout. Terry suggested that this year, to spend time together on Mother's Day, that the three of us take some time and work on the layout together.
