Model Trains

Christmas seems to be the prime time for model train shows.   My dad used to take me every christmas season to Hoboken for the Lakawanna Railroad Exhibit.  I checked, and found it still exists.   Here's a YouTube link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JG6OFdrI1s8

I remember more more about one snowy trip to Hoboken to see the exhibit than I do about the trains themselves.   Somewhere in snow and ice we went up a ramp to the McCarter Highway in Hoboken coming home.   Apparently conditions were so bad that my father backed his 1948 Dodge panel truck back down the ramp to avoid the highway.   I must have picked up from him how dangerous this was, because I was scared to death.   We went home through the snow and ice on the streets.   I think I was aware of my father's love and wish to make me happy making that trip.

Our family also made a yearly christmas season trip to the Lionel train store in NYC.   It was somewhere in lower midtown manhattan, maybe Herald Square.   My Lionel trains, when they arrived (in Newark) were a set of Santa Fe diesels.  I had a double set of engines and a normal train of cars.and caboose.  The fanciest car was a milk loader that used magnets to offload big cans of milk.  It worked about half the time.   I had a lot of switches and an x so I could make a pretty complicated layout.   I had a pretty fancy transformer that could control two different trains.   What was coolest was that my father made me a train layout board that had a hole in the middle where I the engineer could operate the whole show.   I spent many hours with my trains.   Later I even brought them to college and briefly set them up in a college suite living room.   I think the roomates were pretty tolerant though there were some tripping and toe subbing issues.   Bad decision....I sold them after I moved to Morgantown.   I still have a two car street car set (also Lionel O gauge) that could probably run if I cleaned it up and had a layout.   It was much older than my trains....probably pre WWII.   My father just showed up with them one day.   One day, I'll get them going. 

He actually showed up with all kinds of strange stuff from time to time.   I think he bought this stuff cheap somewhere near his laundromat on Bergen St.  Some other things that turned up:

An antique sled.   This one looked like your typical metal runners, but was at least 50% larger than any other sled I'd seen.  At least 3-4 ten year olds could ride it down Eckerd Avenue.   The only thing wrong with it was that it got some much momentum going straight, turnining the steering bars did almost anything.   We just hurtled down that hill.   (Of course I just looked at that hill on Google, and it was not as gigantic as I remembered....in fact it was barely a hill.)

An antique wire recorder.   I don't know what happened, but it didn't stay long.

An accordion.   I think it was in pretty pitiful shape.  It didn't stay long either.... maybe it did make an impression on me.....

A bumper pool table.   This one we kept for a long time.   I got pretty good at this  pool like game that uses a much smaller table.   In fact we bought one over Ebay and it is still used in our basement in Morgantown. 

Did this blog wander a bit?   Let your mind go...especially with childhood memories...and see where it gets you.