A Very Special Holiday Post!

Whoo-hoo! Some weeks ago, I had an email exchange with GDB friend Steve DeGaetano (our resident locomotive expert), and he mentioned his plans to recreate the first miniature train set he ever received, and run it under his Christmas tree. I asked him if he would send me some photos once he had it set up, and he did a lot more than that - he offered to author an article about his history with toy trains, and include images. Here is that article!

For many Americans,  toy electric trains and Christmas go together hand-in-hand. As Ron Hollander wrote in his seminal book on  Lionel trains, “All Aboard!”, “Trains – real as well as toy – have always been inextricably linked with Christmas. Real trains chuffing through snowy landscapes brought people home for this major family holiday. Toy trains were a special and expensive gift, particularly appropriate at Christmas. The practice of setting up a crèche evolved into the building of a “Christmas garden,” a miniature winter scene. This was but a short step to trains circling the Christmas Tree.” 

So, in that spirit, I’m going to share a little bit of that magic.

On a mild Christmas morning in Canoga Park CA, in the winter of 1970, Santa Clause brought me my very first toy electric train set. As a bleary-eyed four-year-old, I stared rapt at the sight before me: Running noisily on a loop of 3-rail track screwed to a green-painted piece of plywood was a genuine Lionel electric train! The set featured a black “Nickel Plate Road” steam locomotive, Green “Burlington” gondola, black Santa Fe flatcar and a brown Nickel Plate caboose. Unbeknownst to me then, Santa had brought me the absolute cheapest Lionel train in the 1970 catalog! 

However, he redeemed himself somewhat by including a separate-sale yellow Sunoco tank car and a blue Northern Pacific hopper.

It may seem ironic for those that know me, but I was sorely disappointed that the locomotive was a steam engine, instead of the huge diesels that I had seen roaming the tracks of the San Fernando Valley!

But moving the lever on the black transformer, hearing the motor buzz and the wheels clickety-clack over the rail joints, and smelling the ozone from the hot motor eventually captured my heart.

Lionel had been founded by Joshua Lionel Cowen in 1902, but by 1969, it was faltering, coming under different corporate umbrellas. By 1970, MPC produced the trains (itself a division of General Mills), and the line was a shadow of its former self—that year’s “catalog” was only a folded poster (at Lionel’s peak in the 1950s, the catalog was nearly 50 pages thick). The old die-cast metal trucks (wheelsets) and couplers on the cars had been replaced by plastic versions; each car now only featured one operating coupler (the other ones were fixed); and the caboose didn’t even have a coupler on the rear, making “switching” impossible! The locomotive side rods were simplified, and there was no working headlight. But whatever it was, that train set was mine, and I spent many years highballing around my miniature world.

(My mother had a mild stroke when she found out that I had discovered the train set box in the garage some time after Christmas—a sure sign that the train set might not actually have come from Santa’s workshop. But oh my, that inimitable Lionel cover art was surely the stuff of dreams!)

Over the years, I got into the smaller HO trains, and my original Lionel train set was lost, or more likely thrown out, as many of my toys were as I got older. In 1987, while in a North Hollywood train store called “The Roundhouse,” a display cabinet had been left open, and I was able to heft an original Lionel steam locomotive that had been made in 1945. It was solid die-cast metal, and the sensation of its massive weight startled me, because my Lionel was all-plastic and weighed practically nothing. I was hooked again!

This year, I thought it might be fun to re-create my original Lionel electric train with near-mint pieces, and run it under the tree. It took a little ingenuity tracking down the various cars. The “Wabash Cannonball” set had several different car road names and detail changes over the years it was available (Why a Nickel Pate Road train would be called the “Wabash Cannonball,” from a different railroad entirely, is anyone’s guess). Home movies of me that Christmas definitely showed the green gondola, and I had distinct memories of the yellow tank car. I picked up a 1970 catalog from eBay, and was able to verify the set pieces. The yellow tank car and blue hopper had model numbers, so I was able to run eBay searches for those. I was also able to run searches for the Nickel Plate locomotive, tender and caboose. So over the course of several months, I was able to reassemble that original train set (Ironically, being the cheapest set in the catalog, even over 50 years later, the pieces aren’t all too expensive; the cars hover around $10 each, and the locomotive can be had for less than $35.00).

We set up our tree the Saturday after Thanksgiving, and after it was trimmed, I carefully placed my Lionel electric train on the track; first the locomotive and tender, and then the cars, with the caboose bringing up the rear. I notched open the transformer throttle, and the little train sprang to life. As it rumbled around the track, the ozone smell and sounds transported me back through time and space, until once again, it was 1970, Christmas, in my house on Chase Street in Canoga Park, fulfilling my dream of being a train engineer.

I was never lucky enough to have a toy train when I was a kid - it's possible that my parents were correct when they assumed that I would play with it for three days and then move on to something new. But to this day, there is just something about a beautiful miniature train running through the "snow" and a mountain range(or is it a city?) of presents beneath a lit Christmas tree. The ultimate "warm fuzzies"! THANK YOU so much to Steve DeGaetano for writing today's article and for sharing photos of his recreated 1970 setup!

PS, I will be out of town for a few days starting today. As always, there will be new posts for you each day. I'll talk to you all soon!