Why I Oughta...

Recently a box arrived from TrainWorld that included a few little surprises.  Why were they surprises?  Because I had pre-ordered a few things from the 2016 Lionel Catalog that had late fall delivery before Christmas last year.  Unfortunately, Lionel didn't make their deadlines, so these despite these boxcars having Christmas themes (I'll post the other one on a different day), came in February. (in other news, the 2017 catalog is up at Trainworld and they're accepting pre-orders .  There are a bunch of stuff that I'm keen to buy...but I wonder if I should wait for the new house??) This first one is from Elf the Movie.  It features Buddy the Elf and a few phrases like "Son of a nutcracker".  I don't love boxcars, but I do love a good Christmas train and love Elf, so this one was hard to pass up. Here's the side panel of the box showing the boxcar description.  These will go over to my Dad's house until we get moved into our place.  Once t

Last week, I showed off the newest addition to the Mantleburg Line in the Target Launching Balloon car , but it wasn't the only new car we bought at the Christmas Train Show out in Wheaton a few weeks ago.  We also added this car above - that has some action just like the balloon car.  It is called the #3510 Satellite Launching Car and is part of the "Pre-War Celebration Series" of reproductions from some early 1940's cars. That silver/metal-looking satellite launches up in the air when you position the car on on operating segment of track.   You can see it here (I've tee'd up this video to start at the right time) in action . It does a very quick trip to the ceiling then down.  Adds some fun operating concepts to the train that takes it from running around in a oval to something that is a bit more interesting for the kids and makes them last a lot longer down in Papa's basement with their Christmas Trains.

Over the weekend, we took my Dad and the Gooz to the annual Christmas Train Show out at the DuPage County Fairgrounds to pick up a few things for everyone's Christmas Train layouts.  With so many boxcars already around, I'm only really interested in getting 'action cars' or 'operating cars' and that's why this "Lionel 6-19824 US Army Operating Target Launcher" car came home with us. See that blue thing on the top of the car?  That is a fan/heater that blows air up through the top of the car and makes a balloon kind of 'hover' above the car.   Here's a quick video that shows the car in action .  It's called a 'target' car because there's a companion 'shooting' car that you can use to aim at the balloon.   Here's a short video that shows that action going on .  Alas, this time, we only got the balloon car, but there's always next year when we can pick up the shooting car, right?

Three kids and now three Disney-themed Lionel O-Gauge train cars for the year.  First was the 75th Anniversary Dumbo boxcar for the King of the Ball Tossers then there was 50th Anniversary Winnie the Pooh Boxcar for the Bird and now above you see a Winter Wishes Pluto 'walking brakeman' boxcar with Santa Minnie and Mickey on the side.  ( Here's a quick video that shows what a typical walking brakeman car does .) This car is in the beautiful non-orange Disney Railroad Lionel packaging, just like the other two.   We set up the kid's Christmas train last weekend at Papa's house and based on the cars that they picked to run on the Mantleburg line, these all will be in heavy rotation next year.

We were at my folk's house over the weekend where the kids helped add all the ornaments to Noonie's Christmas tree and help set up Papa's Lionel Christmas Train.  One of the ornaments that the girls brought to my attention was this one above:  me in Kindergarten from 1983.  Lots of blonde hair in my bowl cut....what a dude!  I have the sneaking suspicion that the King of the Ball Tossers is going to look an awfully lot like this in just a few short years.  (Hopefully, with half Nat's genes in him, he'll be a lot cuter, smarter and kinder than his old man!  And...if I'm hoping, I might as well hope for a punter, too, right??) As for my Dad's Christmas Train:  Since we're staying at Equation Boy/Man's house, we haven't set up our train for a few years and with my parents moving into their new place with a HUGE basement, my Dad had designs on a new layout for this year's holiday season.  I went to one of our storage units and climbed on top

Late in September, I posted a few photos of a special Lionel/Disney Dumbo boxcar that I picked up for one of the kids this year and just this week I received another Disney pre-ordered boxcar.  This time it is the 50th Anniversary of Winnie the Pooh in O-Gauge boxcar form. And just like with the Dumbo car, this Pooh Bear car comes in a pretty nice "Disney Railroad" box.  Took pics of the front, a close-up of the photo of the car on the back of the box and the product listing on the side label that you can see below. As I mentioned in the Dumbo car post, I wasn't quite sure who that one was destined for (amongst my kids and nephews), but this one?  The Pooh Bear one?  That's for the one and only Pooh Bear lover in our family:  The Bird.  She sleeps with a Pooh Bear every night!  He's her favorite.   Well...Ariel might be her true favorite, but Pooh Bear has been there through it all! Have to say that I'm a sucker for Disney/Lionel crossovers.  There&#

In the Venn Diagram that includes Lionel O-Gauge train stuff and Disney stuff, the overlap has been small but consistent over the years.  You can go to any train show (and...yes those things exist!) and find some vintage Mickey the Mouse cabooses and box cars from over the years. And if we were to map people who would have an interest in that intersection, I'd gladly raise my hand.  As we've talked about before, I grew up with a Christmas Train.  My Dad would break out his vintage post-war Lionel train some time after Thanksgiving and we'd set it up.  Sometimes, around the tree, but at some point, my Mom relegated it to the basement.  That tradition - of breaking out the Lionel train set - has been one that I've tried to bring to my own kids.  And, my Dad fed the beast by giving the oldest girl - The Babe - her own set when she was 1. So, beside last year - when we were transient during the holidays - we've set up our Holiday Train.  And we're not aimin

Menards has been doing a really great job of churning out some interesting O Gauge rolling stock over the past few years.  This car above is from the Canadian National and if you look closely has a little mark to the right of the door that says 'Built by Menards 2015'.  My oldest sister has been working in the railroad industry for a long while.  First for the Chicago and Northwestern.  Then the Union Pacific.  And now the Canadian National.   She keeps a few O Gauge cars in her office.  Have to think that this one would fit in well. And that might be the best use of these Menards cars, in my opinion.  Looks.  The couplers kinda suck.  They roll really nice and once you have them set up and connected, there's very few problems.  But, they're NOT high-quality couplers and NOT Lionel couplers.  They sell these cars pretty cheap.  Like $20 for each one and less if you buy 6 of them or something like that.  Can you imagine having a layout that would allow for your train

A few weekends back, I packed up The Bird and The Gooz and my dad in the van and we went out to the Wheaton Fairgrounds for the Great Midwest Train Show .  This is the second time we've gone to the show (last year, I went with my dad) and it was a lot of fun.   I picked up a few things for me, my kids and my nephew, but by far, the best purchase was this really cute vintage metal tunnel.  It was being sold by a guy who had HO scale stuff and had this over on the edge of his table.  He was asking $10 for it and I got it for $5.  Pretty great deal, if you ask me!  I think he was happy to get rid of it.  I was happy to get it! It has some really great scenes on both sides of it.  And it is like a foot-long. Our layout has never been 'realistic', so I think adding something like this adds a bit of whimsy and - frankly - vintage charm that I really like. I think, tragically, we're not going to be putting up the kids' train this year because we're in Equa

I picked up this "Where The Wild Things Are" boxcar last week as a Christmas gift for one of my nephews.  I have a little tradition where I gift each of the boys a train car and begin to build their collection of cars starting at a very young age.  Based on my experience, there's just a handful of years to capture a boy's attention in electric trains - and even if you are successful, and you get the kids to like trains - their attention will eventually wane as they hit the teen years.  That was the story with me.  My dad tried SO HARD to get me to be into his vintage trains. I was...then I went away from them.  Now I'm back. So...one of the traditions here is to try to find a train car that 'means's something to each of the boys.  This one, is aimed at a special guy and will hopefully appeal to him (and his parents!) and build on his collection of cars.  At some point, he's going to need a locomotive, too! But, this car is an 'aquarium car

The fine folks up in Wisconsin at Menards are out with another new set of O Gauge train cars that caught my eye this week.  They're calling them 'Flatcars with Panel Trucks' and the trucks are vintage-looking wagons.  They're pretty cute. They're promo'ing three of them:  Union Pacific, Soo Line and Santa Fe.  No Chicago and North Western, though. The Lionel set that my dad had from his childhood is a Santa Fe post-war set and I have to think that these Santa Fe cars would look preeettay preeettay preeettay great with his other Santa Fe stuff.

Looks like a little typo slipped past the editor of the Menards O Gauge Train 'stuff' advertisement that they're running in Classic Toy Trains.  And...yes...let's get this out of the way:  I am a subscriber to said magazine.  Painful and nerdy; yes it is. But, if you look on the Menards' site, you see that they call out/spell O Gauge the right way with the 'u' in there.  Was it a space issue?  Could they not fit in the 'u' in the green box?  Or just sloppy editing?  I'm guessing the later. As an aside...I used to keep a blog that highlighted things like this (typos) in the political world.  Boy...those were the days.

Menards comes out with a handful of Lionel O-Scale train cars each year.  They typically are Menards-related like flatcars with a Menards pick-up truck on it or a car with roof trusses on it or something. But...this year...they came out with a new military-themed car.  It had a tank on it.  And...they even included a backstory.  I guess these aren't really meant for kids (the whole train thing is for middle-aged and older dudes like myself?) but the politicizing ('the vast military background' of the President) seems strange?  I don't mind it, and guessing.....the majority of Menards' shoppers don't mind it, but....seems odd, right?

I picked up one of these at the Great Midwest Train Show before Christmas.  It was billed by the dealer as being "basically a perpetual motion machine".  Unfortunately, one of the plastic pieces in the box was broken, so it didn't work too well. So, I went looking on Ebay for another one to use as parts.  Found one for just a few bucks.  When it arrived, guess what?  Had a break in the exact same spot.  Thinking I've found the vulnerable piece in the production, huh?

Last year, we put up our first Lionel layout in the basement.   You can see it here in this photo .  It was nice sized and fit into the corner of our basement.  Nat hated it.  She thought it was way, way, way too big.  The Babe, and I, however loved it. With Halloween just a day away, my attention is turning to Christmas. Putting up the train isn't so much about the actual train as it is about having a memory of my childhood with my Dad.  In looking around the web for inspiration, I came across this massive layout that was (apparently) on the back cover of the 1957 Lionel catalog.  From the looks of it, this appears to be a 2X size of our current layout, which means we're going to have to find a new home for the train.  With all the little kids at our house all the time, moving it into a different room isn't the worst idea ever.  I'm thinking that it can fit neatly into either the spare bedroom down there or perhaps even into the crawlspace underneath our family r

I found this vintage American Flyer "service kit" at a Naperville antique store last week. I didn't buy it, but for the right American Flyer collector, it seemed like a great pick-up.

The Babe added this guy to the end of her log-rolling car on the ole' Mantleburg line in the basement.  I think we'll let him rid along for a while.

With the help of my brother-in-law Bill, I got my train table up and running last week.  It is 5' X 9' and has a layout that is called "Round-n-Round the X-mas Tree".  The Babe has had quite a lot of fun running the train around the track most days. My dad always put out his Lionel train during Christmastime when I was a kid and he gave me this set a few years back when the Babe was born.  Although it takes up a lot of space, I really like having it set up for the holidays and will (hopefully) be putting it back up in the years to come.