I think I've been taken for another Internet scam.
Of course the Internet is ripe for this kind of thing. The story of Kaycee Nicole Swenson is one infamous example. Unfortunately I fell for that one too, although not as hard as some people did. All I really wasted in that case was some bandwidth and a little disk space. That's more than I can say for the people who sent her gifts and other things.
Most traditional toy train layouts feature painted scenery: After plopping the 4x8 sheets down on some 2x4s to make a table, the hobbyist grabs a brush and some dark gray and green paint and paints roads and grass on the board.
If you want something that looks a little better than that but doesn't take a lot of time, here's my method, which takes 2-3 hours to complete.
I just spent some time explaining some of the terminology that goes along with Lionel and other O gauge and O scale trains. So I thought maybe a definition of some terms might prove useful to somebody.
Although some of the people in our neighborhood had their Christmas stuff up well in advance of Thanksgiving, my wife and I did the traditional thing, setting the tree up the day after Thanksgiving.
A number of hobbyists are reporting that they have spotted a Lionel train set at Target, priced at $249.
From the pictures, it looks like pretty much the same old starter set Lionel has been selling since the early 1950s, with the addition of the modern "Fastrack" with integrated plastic roadbed that plugs together easily. That's not all bad.
I hear stories all the time about the Lionel train that someone found at a garage sale for $10. Or sometimes it's a Marx. The one that bothered me the most was the story about a 65-year-old American Flyer locomotive for $10, and the guy who got it didn't even like O gauge.
Whatever. Today was my day. I found a Lionel starter set from 1999. The price marked on it: $8. I didn't haggle. I handed over Alexander Hamilton, scooped up the train set, grabbed a couple of Washingtons, and headed to the car with a train set under my arm.
My buddy Todd brought over his dad's American Flyer train today. It had been a gift from his dad on his first Christmas. It was from 1938.
That was a peculiar year, because it was the first year that A.C. Gilbert, of Erector fame, built American Flyer trains. Previously American Flyer had been an independent company in Chicago.
This model was a Gilbert design, and at most produced from 1938 to 1941.
O gauge is the size of train that most Americans associate with Lionel. It was actually invented around the turn of the century in Germany, although whether it was invented by Marklin or one of the many johnny-come-latelies is open to debate.
After World War II, O gauge faded very quickly in Europe, although in the United States it experienced a resurgence that helped make Marx and Lionel two of the biggest, most profitable toy companies in the world.
I've seen some pictures of European O gauge. You've got to see this stuff.
I'm rewiring my train layout. You're supposed to wire every third track section back to the transformer to prevent voltage drop, which presents a challenge when you're using traditional Lionel lockons that clip onto the track.
A lot of people just solder a pair of wires to the track. But that's a lot of soldering. And soldering under a table exposes yourself to lots of nasty chemicals (such as, oh, lead) that you don't want to be breathing in.
