My dad has a bunch of old Lionel O27-gauge trains that we sometimes set up for Christmas. I love them. These trains are from the 1950′s. Back in those days, toys were made of metal so that they won’t even break (our locomotive has taken more than one tumble off our train table). Also, toymakers weren’t concerned with child safety. Back then the philosophy was, “If your idiot kid can’t figure out how to avoid getting shocked or burned while playing with this toy, well that’s just the gene pool taking care of itself” (or the work of Jesus, if you live in the South). When everything is connected and plugged in, the entire layout hums with electrical discharge. And when the trains go, there are sparks everywhere. AWESOME!
The best part is the ridiculous train accessories we have.
There’s the basic stuff, like a semaphors and banjo signals that are triggered when the train rolls over a particular section of track. There’s also a little gateman who will pop out of his house to say hi to the train as it goes by. There are various lit-up accessories like street lamps, the train station, and a rotating search light tower.
The coolest thing we have is the rocket launcher, which has a moving gantry and fires a rocket fifteen feet into the air. There’s also an electro-magnetic gantry crane for loading trains. There’s an operating milk car that drops off cans at a loading platform, and a log car that similarly can dump logs. A new addition this year (my Christmas present to my dad) was a helicopter car. When the car goes over a special piece of track, you can trigger it to launch the helicopter – which goes flying off. The steam engine we have whistles and makes smoke. It’s all pretty fun.
You can see the rocket launcher in the foreground here. The gantry crane is behind it. Both are remote-operated.
The mighty Santa Fe diesel engine has two electric motors and runs as smooth as silk.
Jo and I playing with trains.
The finished layout has two circuits on different transformers so that it is possible to race!
