Christmas and Model Trains: Eastern U.S. Firehouse Christmas Train Gardens

(Time for the annual Christmas and model trains post! This time, a repeat from a year ago.) 

Trains and Christmas have gone together for a long time, whether it’s a model train around the Christmas tree or a department store Christmas display.

But model trains, Christmas gardens and fire departments also go together in some U.S. east coast communities, as I recently discovered.

Ellicott City, MD

It goes back to the 19^th century, when Moravian immigrants that settled in Pennsylvania and Maryland brought along with them the custom of creating an indoor miniature garden to tell the story of the Nativity.

Thesse gardens, called a “putz” (pronounced “pootz”), would include people, animals, buildings, and landscaping.

Wise Ave. train garden

Locals who saw the Moravian gardens began putting them under their Christmas trees. Later, they added trains to the scenes.

Since not everyone was rich enough to afford a garden in their home, firehouses began creating and displaying train gardens so everyone in the community could experience them—a tradition that is still practiced in some firehouses in those states.

Baltimore Fire Museum

One city where the trains gardens are likely to be found is Baltimore, where they can be found in homes, firehouses and businesses. Other communities also have them.

Read more about the train gardens here.  Check out this Christmas train garden at the Wise Avenue Volunteer Fire Company in Dundalk, Maryland. Also check out this one in Highlandtown. 

Read more in the Christmas and Model Trains series.

1. Christmas and the Danger of Model Trains.

2. Lionel Trains on Christmas Morning.

3. Trains Under the Christmas Tree.

4. Santa and Model Trains.

Jarrettsville, MD

President's Choice Train Sets Re-Visited

It's always interesting to check the stats for this blog to see what posts are of interest to readers. For the past month, one of the most popular posts has been the one from 2012 about President's Choice train sets.

For those of you who don't know about them, the President's Choice train sets were the brainchild of Boris Polakow, Vice President of Canadian Sales Development for Loblaws (owner of Real Canadian Superstore). 

In 1992, he decided it was time for a quality, affordable train set for kids for Christmas. His colleagues at Loblaws weren’t so sure, but Polakow proved them wrong. 

That first run of 10,000 President’s Choice/PC Express train sets sold out within days of being released before Christmas. It started a tradition that lasted until 2006.

Maybe all the recent interest in the sets is because it is Christmas; maybe people are looking for these classic train sets for kids, or maybe for themselves since the sets are now collectibles.

Whatever the reason, if you are interested in these unique Canadian train sets, click here to read more. 

Feliz Navidad! from the M & M Sub.

It's Christmas, and time for another Christmas train. This time, it's a boxcar made by Mexican modeller Edgar Romero Roldán. It's based on a prototype car in the Kansas City Southern de Mexico Christmas Train.

From the CP Rail Manitoba & Minnesota Subdivision, I wish everyone a great Christmas season, and all the best in the new year.

Or, as they say in Mexico: Feliz Navidad!

Here's the prototype car that inspired Edgar:

And another one that he made:

(Great modelling, Edgar!)

For other M & M Sub. Christmas posts, see Merry (Boxcar) Christmas; Christmas and Model Trains: Garrison Keillor and the Dangers of Christmas; Lionel Trains on Christmas Morning; and Santa and Model Trains.

Christmas and Model Trains (4): Santa and Trains

Once upon a time, Santa loved model trains--as evidenced by some Christmas cards I found on the Web.

Today his workshop is more likely to be filled with video games, iPads and other electronic devices. But we can still remember the days when the jolly old man tinkered with trains. And we all know what scale he modelled : HO, HO, HO.

He certainly seems to be enjoying himself in these pictures!

Christmas and Model Trains (3): Trains Under the Christmas Tree

Unlike John Coker and Renee Law, I have never set up
a train underneath the Christmas tree.

As long as I can remember, it's been a tradition for operating model trains to be put under Christmas trees.

That never happened in our house when I was growing up, and I don't do it now. In fact, I have never seen a real operating model train underneath a Christmas tree in someone's home.

And yet, trains and Christmas trees have gone together for a long time. Where did it start?

An article in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette says it may started in Pennsylvania over 300 years ago--long before Lionel, and real trains, for that matter.

According to Jim Morrison, curator of the National Christmas Museum in Paradise, PA, it could date back to the 1700s when Moravian Christians in that state set up elaborate Nativity scenes in their homes called "putzen"--the German word for decoration around the holidays.

In the mid-1800s, he said, people created villages at the base of the tree with items such as model farmhouses fashioned after their own dwellings.

Cast-iron toys emerged toward the late 1800s in the form of homes, carriages and fire stations. When trains came on the scene about that same time, stationary cast-iron models of trains were placed underneath the tree.

When Lionel, Ives and other manufacturers started making model trains in the 20th century, it wasn't much of a leap for some people to start using moving models underneath the tree.

The idea was helped along by department stores, which displayed model trains in holiday settings, including underneath Christmas trees.

True or not, somewhere along the line model trains under the Christmas tree became a tradition for some families. But not mine--at least, not yet.

Anyone have other ideas for how model trains under the Christmas tree became a tradition?

See how John and Renee made their Christmas tree layout here.

Christmas and Model Trains (2): Lionel Trains on Christmas Morning

A long time ago in a land far away . . . the only thing many boys wanted for Christmas was trains.

This was the land of my childhood, back in the 1960s. A time when it just wasn't Christmas if there wasn't a train under the tree. And, back then, it meant Lionel trains.

But as the ads on this page show, it wasn't just about trains; it was about male bonding, about the relationship between father and son. Put down that newspaper, dad! Play trains with your son.

But it wasn't just dads and sons; it was also about family happiness and togetherness: Look! Even sister wants to play with the train.

It was also a way for men to recapture their boyhood--to remember those days gone by when they, like junior, lay on the floor watching the train fly by, dreaming about being an engineer one day. (Instead of the boring office job they ended up in.)

Was it ever so sweet and gentle, or has time smoothed over the rough spots in our memories? Nostalgia is a powerful thing, and the blacks and whites of the past can merge into a subtle, mellow grey. That's OK; better to have good memories of days gone by than bad ones--especially if they involve Christmas and trains.

Speaking of which, Lionel understands this nostalgic urge; now you can watch your memories roll along the track by buying the Christmas Morning or High Hopes boxcars. It's not a bad way to say "Merry Christmas," I suppose.

And if this isn't enough to make those of you who are older feel like visiting your childhood--or those of you who are younger want to visit that strange land of the 1950s and 60s--then watch The Wonderful World of Trains, a film produced by Lionel in 1960 (including a train with nine--count 'em, nine, giraffe cars going up and down, up and down).

What will be under your tree this Christmastime?

Christmas and Model Trains (1): Garrison Keillor and the Dangers of Christmas

One of my favorite authors is Garrison Keillor of Prairie Home Companion fame.

Keillor has written about trains a few times, including "My North Dakota Railroad Days."

This fictitious piece in the New Yorker magazine is about the Prairie Queen, a train which crossed North Dakota on tracks so straight that "passengers stood on the rear of the platform of the parlor car in the trans–Dakota Canal, and trolled for fish."

As far as I know he has only written once about model trains, and that was for Land's End magazine, in a collection of short items called The Dangers of Christmas.

One of those dangers was "wanting something too much and therefore making it impossible."

And the thing he wanted? A model train. Wrote Keillor:

"I, for example, would dearly love to receive a model train layout similar to the one of my childhood, which rusted and decayed. I remind myself every year not to want it too much, but I do, and I never get it.

"A man my age can't simply walk into a store and buy a model train set for himself; people would talk, people would chuckle behind his back, and one day he'd come home to find an attorney sitting smiling in the living room, who would explain to him in easy-to-understand terms, using simple declarative sentences, why his financial affairs will hereafter be managed by his nephew Vince.

"I keep telling myself, 'I honestly don't care if that model train layout is under the tree or not,' but that's not the truth, and I know it."

Christmas at Winnipeg's Assiniboine Valley Railway

Note: Since this post was written in 2011, Bill Taylor, the creator and owner of the Assiniboine Valley Railway, passed away (in 2013). Although the trains still operate in December, the volunteers who have kept the railway running no longer are able to put on the Christmas light runs. 

One of the great Christmas traditions in Winnipeg is the annual Assiniboine Valley Railway Christmas train ride.

The AVR is 1.6" scale 7.5" gauge riding railway located in the backyard of local Winnipeg Model Railroad Club member Bill Taylor—if you can call a seven acre site a backyard.

Started in 1995, the AVR has a 3,700 foot long mainline, and about 6,400 feet of track altogether. There are three diesel locomotives, one box cab and several steamers, plus 39 cars.

Each Christmas Bill puts on a light show, with over 100,000 lights illuminating the line, along with nativity scenes, angels, stars, snowmen, candy canes and more.

The train rides are available every evening in December, with the exception of Dec. 25. Between 10,000 to 13,000 people come out each year to ride the trains. Donation boxes are set up around the area to raise money for local charities.

Not being much of an outdoor winter person, I prefer to ride the AVR in summer. Click here to see a video of a ride along the line, and click here for a summer photo visit.

Merry (Boxcar) Christmas!

This Christmas box car was painted by Rei Alvarez, an artist in Austin, TX for the Balcones Recycling Company. The car is owned by the Texas and South Eastern Railroad. (#5096)

Alverez specializes in big murals; he painted the car this fall. He says on his blog that the car will be used on a Christmas card, too.

The photo on top is from Edgar Romero Roldán; the other two below are from Alvarez's blog. (http://rei74.blogspot.com/2010/10/balcones-recycling-austin-tx_20.html)