Why I Oughta...

I was out walking one morning and came across this little garden railway.  It is not too far from our house, but I've never come across it before, despite walking around for the past few years.  It totally reminds me of the Epcot garden train that is just outside the Germany Pavilion - I've posted a photo of that railway here . This setup isn't huge - maybe eight feet by six feet and has a couple of switches and fie buildings.  There is no locomotive or rolling stock out, so I'm guessing that they run this seasonally.  The pond is a nice touch, too.  There's a little bench for kids to sit in on the far left of the photo above, so it wouldn't be too much of a stretch to think that this is a grandpa's house/railway that he runs with his grandkids. I *think* this is O Gauge - or thereabouts - and not a big garden train nor a train the size of Walt Disney's where you could ' ride aboard '.  There are a few cars from the Carolwood Pacific Railw

This is a car that runs on the Mantleburg line.  Built in 1999 by Lionel, it doesn't have a box and is very heavy.  The yellow and blue look sharp on the tracks. 

A few years back, Nat gifted me this Dept 56 building from "A Christmas Story" line that was part of Mantleburg.  It was the only A Christmas Story (it is difficult to continue to insert that "A" in the name of the buildings, but I'll continue to do it.) building that we have as part of Mantleburg.  And, if you have been paying attention over the past few years, you might know that things have slowed down in Mantleburg.  We haven't added or annexed any new buildings into the Village of Mantleburg for the past few seasons and have seen some of Mantleburg be de-annexed (via Craigslist) and re-annexed into other neighboring communities.  And that's ok.  We're trying to simplify things around Christmastime and we're focusing on the Mantleburg line. This fall, I posted some photos and posts about the various Lemax structures that Menards is carrying this season .  All would be nice, but having my mantra in mind, it is enough to know this exist an

One of my Christmas traditions is going to the annual Dupage County Train Show with my Dad, my nephew and my kids.  I've posted about it the past few years and have done a little show-and-tell in posts of the items that we've added to the Mantleburg line.  Last year, I posted photos of the Plasticville Drug Store , a Schlitz Beer Lionel Billboard , an American Flyer Lackawanna Bridge , and a 70's or 80's era Lionel Flag Pole .  In 2016, we added an operating car or two .  This year, I ended up buying just one thing:  this Marx Tin Plate Pre-War trackside sign.  It was just $2 and I liked the looks of it, so I made the deal.  It doesn't operate or animate and it isn't exactly in line with the kids Mantleburg line (with our FasTrack and all), but that's just fine.  I've added it to our Christmas Train layout and I think it adds a nice, vintage touch. One of the things at the show that I was talking to my Dad and Nephew about was the fact tha

Just yesterday, I posted about with the kid's Christmas Train (the Mantleburg Line) set up in the basement, we're using more of our cars that we've picked up in the past few years while the trains were in storage.  The operating barrel car that I shared yesterday was, as I noted, in a weird color gold and brown box from Lionel .  In that post, I showed the components of the operating car - including the barrels, the car and just the simple tray to 'collect' the barrels once they're pushed out of the car.  We run FasTrack from Lionel, so *that* setup is easy to use.  Meaning...you don't need to modify any of the track/trackside in any way.   The little tray just sits next to a segment of operating FasTrack and the car simply "works".  Nice and easy - especially for us with the kids at the controls.  Today's post is about a different operating car:  The 3356 Santa Fe Operating Horse Car and Corral.  Lionel part 6-19895.  The car is liste

For my birthday earlier this year, I was given this MTH Burlington Line Steel-sided Reefer Car.  It is marked "Way of the Zephyrs" and has the vintage "Burlington Line" rectangular logo on the side.  Those of you who read the blog and follow along with the Mantleburg line model train posts (ummm...there can't be *that* many of you, right???) might be confused about this box and the mention of MTH.  This isn't a Lionel train, but is from the competing challenger brand:  Mike's Train House or MTH for short.  This is the third (I think) MTH train car that we have on the Mantleburg line.  The first one was a caboose and the other one is a Santa/Snowman handcar.  This Burlington line car is kinda neat because everyday now I ride the BNSF line on the Metra. 

Just yesterday, I posted a couple of photos of a boxcar that I picked up over the years at the annual Christmas Train Show in Wheaton.  It was from Hamm's Beer .  Today is another beer-related boxcar: one from Miller High Life.  It features the classic tagline: "The Champagne of Beers" and was made two years earlier than the Hamm's one - in 1973.  Similarly to the Hamm's car, this Lionel O Gauge 6-9852 billboard reefer car comes in the 1970's era Lionel Trains box and has the printed label on the side.   This Miller High Life one also has an orange price sticker that the price scratched out but says "Sporting Goods".  Not sure if that was the name of the store or the section of the store.  Either way....kinda strange.  I have a draw to vintage beer-related Lionel stuff.  In addition to these two (The Hamm's one and *this* Miller High Life one), I also run a Schlitz boxcar that I'll have to capture in a photo and post.  I also have

We were setting up the kids Christmas Train (the Mantleburg Line) in the basement and I came across a some rolling stock that I've picked up the past few years, but have not been run on the line due to the lack of operations.  Mostly because of our up-ended Christmas (moving between Elmhurst and Naperville) the past few years, the Mantleburg Line hasn't run, but this year, we picked up the foam boards from my parents house and I set up the train with the kids. There were a couple of beer-related boxcars that are still packaged up in plastic that I think I bought at the annual Christmas Train Show out in Wheaton one of the previous Winters. This one is from Hamm's and is called a "Billboard Reefer".  Lionel 6-9862. If you look closely at the photo at the top of this post, you'll see that it has a 1975 built date and is in this box that is of that era.  Those of you who know Lionel Trains Corporate history may know that in 1975, Lionel Trains were owne

I've mentioned in all of the recent Lemax Christmas Village posts that Mantleburg isn't annexing any new structures into town this year and with the recent election of a slate of Libertarian candidates taking on new leadership roles in town, they've even moved to de-annex some existing portions of Mantleburg and just focus the town's operations on the seasonal train. This year, I've covered a handful of Lemax Christmas Village buildings that are part of the Menards holiday setup including: 1. Draft Brothers Craft Brewing Supplies Store from the Harvest Crossing Collection. 2. The Elf Workshop from Santa's Wonderland Village. 3. Nora's Christmas Boutique from the Caddington Village Collection. 4. The Round-up animated carnival ride from the Carnival Village Collection. The one in the post today is interesting because it *is* potentially train-related.  And that's why, despite their anti-growth/anti-government leanings the new Mayor and

Another of the new items that Menards is showing in their O Gauge train section in stores this year is a series of gondola cars like this Santa Fe one you see above.  I've written before about how my Dad runs a vintage (Post War) Santa Fe F3 locomotive and over the years I've gifted him a few Santa Fe cars from Lionel .  I've never given him one from Menards, but I've bought a few on my own and while I LOVE the prices (see above..$20), I don't like two things: 1.  the boxes that Menards sells these in.  The packaging is NOT very re-usable.  2.  the couplers.  They're not great. #1 in the list above is really the biggest thing for me.  We're Christmas train people.  That means that we pack away our train for 10 months a year and then bring it out for the holidays.  The boxes that Lionel ships their cars in are a big part of that storage process and the orange boxes have meaning to me whenever we get them out.  These Menards clamshells don't reall

In addition to all the Christmas Village buildings from Lemax that I posted last week, Menards has also introduced their holiday toy section including a lot of HO and O Gauge train items.  They have a bunch of cars (I've posted about some of them before ) and buildings .  But this year, one item caught my eye:  this Lighted Billboard .  You can see it in the photo above.  But also here on the Menards site . It comes with 26 different signs that you can put in the billboard ranging from vintage scenes to modern, current logos like Pepsi and Mountain Dew.  Menards describes it thusly : Pre-lit and prebuilt, this O-scale billboard features 26 interchangeable decals. Decorate your billboard front and back with an assortment of colorful decals, including popular brand names and railroad advertisements. This backlit billboard also houses over 25 LED lights, ensuring your chosen decal will come to life with beautifully saturated light! Constructed of wood and metal for maximum

I picked up this pair of flat cars with Chicago and Northwestern trailers a while back at the train show, but it has not made it out of the box yet.  I'm a sucker for Chicago and Northwestern (or North Western) train cars.  My oldest sister worked at the C&NW before it was gobbled up by the Union Pacific.  If you look closely around town, you'll still see signs for this line on bridges, buildings , stations and what-have-you. Maybe this is the year we get the full Mantleburg line out and running on a table?

Yesterday, I posted about an operating chicken-sounds boxcar which is the first of a few of my potential pre-orders from the 2018 Lionel O-Gauge catalog.  Today, I'm sharing the second item that I am eyeing in this year's catalog:  the Moe & Joe Lumber Flatcar.  Note...in the image above from the catalog the red "NEW!", which the chicken-sweeping car from yesterday didn't have . Trainworld has this one up on their pre-order site for $20 less than the listed price above and includes this description: "Moe & Joe figures unload boards at the touch of a button".  The Trainworld image and description also includes the unloading bin, which is absent in the image above from the catalog. I poked around YouTube and came across this same car, but the description says that the last time it was made was 2004.  So, this will be the first one in 14 years?  Watching the video (I've embedded it below), I'm surprised that Moe & Joe unload jus

The folks over at Lionel Trains have recently released their 2018 catalog or 'Big Book' as they call it.  You can find it here in this magazine-style viewer.   Or you can download it as a pdf here .  I've been thumbing through it and like a kid with the old Sears Catalog, I've been circling the items that I'm interested in and will likely pre-order.  The catalog is split between O-Scale and O-Gauge. O-Scale is Lionel's premium product.  And it isn't meant for kids.  The locomotives and cars come with high-end features, are more realistic - meaning they are true 1:48 scale, all have built-in bluetooth/other power controls and cost quite a bit more.  We're talking about $700 to $900 for a locomotive. O-Gauge is where we play.  They now call it 'traditional O-Gauge'.  The pieces are smaller than O-Scale (not by much) but still run on the same 3 rail track that Lionel is famous for.  This is also where they seem to have more fun with things in

I was packing up my train stuff for the year (btw....we finally got around to putting out our Christmas Train, yeah!) and I came across this Plasticville Pharmacy and Hardware Store that I picked up at the 2017 Christmas Train Show in Wheaton.  This is a piece that we bought for $1 and goes along with the other items that I've already posted here including the Plasticville Town Hall , the Schlitz beer billboard , the American Flyer Lackawanna girder bridge and Lionel flag pole .  According to the fine folks at Tandem Associates - who have chronicled Plasticville - this piece you see above is the 1853 Tan Version.  From their site, we find out when this was released : Bachmann introduced the No. 1853 in 1974 in a Bicentennial box, they had redesigned the front wall that was now TAN in color. As you can see in the version I bought, there are two big open windows up front.  Turns out, those are for little cardboard inserts.  Again....Tandem comes to the rescue : Via Ta

More buildings and accessories are springing up on the Mantleburg line.  In addition to the American Flyer bridge that I posted about yesterday and the Plasticville Town Hall that we bought at the Christmas Train Show out in Wheaton, we also bought this Lionel Flag pole that features both the American flag and a Lionel flag standing at attention.  As you can see on the box, they are showing a red Lionel pennant under the American Flag, but when we opened it up, it was flying a blue Lionel pennant.  Just poking around on the web, it seems that's common?  Here's a listing showing the exact setup with red on the box and blue inside .  Seems like the new Mantleburg Town Hall could use a flagpole outside, right?  Wonder if we can make up a little "Village of Mantleburg" flag and run it right under the Lionel flag?  Of course, we'd follow Roman Mars lead and be good vexillologists and come up with a quality flag with no words on it, right? 

I picked up this Lackawanna girder bridge at the same Christmas train show that I bought the Plasticville Town Hall building earlier this month and we are going to add it to the Mantleburg line this week.  This isn't a Lionel part, but rather this is made by American Flyer .  I think this might be the first American Flyer part that we've acquired.  It was just $5, but looking at the various listings on Ebay and Etsy , they're mostly listed for between $40 and $50.  So...thinking we scored a deal. The sticker itself is cool, right?  Shows it was made by The A.C. Gilbert Company in New Haven, Connecticut, USA.  Who knew...but...The Gilbert Company invented the erector set !  They owned American Flyer from 1938 to 1966 , but I can't quite figure out when they put out this bridge.  From the sounds of it, I would guess it happened sometime after the 1946 post-war startup and like the mid-1950's when things slowed down before their founder died in 1961 .  We h

Last week, I posted a photo of the Schlitz Lionel O Gauge billboard that I scored at the Christmas Train Show out in Wheaton and hinted that we bought a few more things.  Today, you see one of those:  Plasticville Hall.  The version that I bought was fully assembled as you see it here and decorated by someone with some garland and a wreath over the front door.  It is all doll'd up for Christmas time.  And that's part of the appeal here for me:  we only set up the Mantleburg Line as our traditional Christmas train.  We have enough cars and rolling stock for Mantleburg, but we don't have that many accessories or buildings or structures, so that's what I've been focusing on at the show.  I've come across some of these Plasticville structures and they never appealed to me.  But for some reason (I'm pretty sure it is the garland and wreath!?!?), this one called out to me.  Five dollars later, it was coming home with us.  Turns out, the one we bought is the

Over the weekend, we went out to Wheaton to attend the Great Midwest Train Show with my Dad for our annual visit.  We go every December to look through the tables and I get a big shot of nostalgia as I recall the trips to the train show that I took with my Dad when I was just a little one.  We always come home with some nice loot from the vendors and this year is no different.  Above you can see a Lionel billboard with a Schlitz Beer card inside of it with the 1974 date on the bottom.  Just $1, too, which makes it all the more sweeter.  We scored a few other items that I'll post here on the blog this week, but this billboard is my favorite item. We haven't had time to set up the Mantleburg line this year (shameful, I know), but when we do, this will go perfectly trackside next to some of the other accessories.  I also posted about some animated billboards that I picked up earlier this year here on the blog , but I don't remember if I bought one for Mantleburg or not

Yesterday, I posted a photo of an operating log dump car that I picked up for a Christmas present this year and mentioned that I scored a few operating accessories for the boys.  Above, you see one of those accessories in the Old St. Nick Operating Billboard.  This is the first time I've bought an operating billboard from Lionel but I know the basics:  there are two scenes that alternate in between by the rotating of the slats on the billboard.  The official product listing on Lionel.com show the two scenes and you can see them on the back of the box below.  For each of the boys that I've bought one of these for, I've been buying them boxcars/operating cars and/or track pieces/bridges/switches every year since they were born, so I figure they have enough rolling stock.  To keep their attention, they need operating accessories, right? And, like me, they only haul out their layout for the holidays and keep a holiday train so the St. Nick piece seems appropriate, righ