My son (at age 2) operating our Christmas train. Note we also installed a "yard fence" around the tree to protect the train as well as him.

One of my co-workers inquired about getting a train around the Christmas tree and whether I had any recommendations. Well, maybe she didn’t ask for a recommendation, but I gave her one anyway.

My mom has an HO-Scale steam 4-4-0 locomotive with passenger cars around her tree, and in college I had an N-Scale Burlington Northern passenger train. Grant, my Nebraska correspondent, has an HO-Scale freight train, and my in-laws have a large, almost G-Gauge, battery operated train going around their tree. These are all good, and many times any train will do but it comes down to your style, space, and preference. My preference is in the features and operation.

We have a Lionel Christmas freight train chugging around our tree. It is a 4-4-2 O-Gauge steam locomotive with a third rail. Lionel is the classic train to put around the tree and they are very solid engines which will last many years. They typically feature buttons on the power pack that allow you to blow a whistle or ring a bell if the train is equipped with those features. Most, if not all, of the engines chuff smoke and have working headlights, and passenger cars and cabooses are typically lighted. With the sounds, lights, and smoke, children and adults will enjoy the action and play provided.

The Lionel set we purchased was about $219 and can be picked up at any model train or hobby store, online, or at some retail stores like Target and Walmart. My wife hates the smell of the smoke, but different flavors such as Gingerbread, Candy Cane, and even Bacon, may be purchased online from Mega-Steam. There is also a switch to turn off the smoke generator if you choose. It is recommended that if you are not going to fill the stack with fluid, leave the generator switched off otherwise it can harm the unit.

If you just want to turn the train on, let it run, and not worry about bells, smoke, and whistles, perhaps a Lionel is overkill. Also, if you will have any chance of metal coming in contact with the tracks, you are best to get a battery operated train that doesn’t receive power through the rails. Toy metal cars, scissors, or screwdrivers lying across electrified tracks can cause sparks and short-circuit.

If you get a train with electrified rails, and if you have children around, I strongly recommend getting remote controlled power strips so that the trains are not operated without your supervision. Plus, many train power packs remain on when not in use so it’s always nice to have an external switch. It is advised to make sure children and adults operate the train at safe speeds as moving the throttle all the way up can cause the train to jump the track, spark, and short-circuit. Slowly move the throttle up until you reach a reasonable speed.

Once a tree has a train around it space for presents is kind of limited. A few flat presents (shirt boxes) will lay nicely between the trunk of the tree and the tracks, but be prepared to have an extra pile of presents next to your tree.

A train around your tree is definitely a wonderful addition to your festive decorating. Every decorating style is unique and I encourage you to explore your options and find one that meets your needs and desires.

I used satellite photos, Google Street View, and my own photos to create a scale drawing of Carpenter's

It was art time in our household so I set my son up with some paints, crayons and paper before I sat down next to him with my own pencil, scale ruler, graph paper, and numerous pictures of a building I was working on.

“Are you not doing art with me?” He asked.

“Yes I am, I’m drawing,” came my reply.

He tilted his head down and raised his eyes as if to sternly correct me. “Drawing isn’t art.”

My defense mechanism kicked in. I held up my graph paper, showing him what I had completed so far, the footprint and west elevation of a building. I figured he wouldn’t comprehend my higher understanding of what art was, but I didn’t care. I proceeded to tell him, “Yes, this is a form of art. I am making a representation of a building and putting it on paper so as to recreate it in another form.”

He stared at it for a little while. “That the building they took down?”

I smiled, yes! I achieved my purpose, he recognized the subject in my scale drawing! It felt good to have his shoes on my feet. (“Yes, that does look like a horse!”) I affirmed that it was, in fact, that building, and he then went on to recount the story of how it came to be that the building was no longer with us–just as he does every time we drive past the site where it once stood. Fire, bulldozers, dirt.

Then he mentioned our pet rabbit who died last year. I think he was making a greater connection to life and death than what actually exists.

West Elevation

Maybe he wasn’t too far off as at times I felt this project was a kind of memorial to a piece of local history. The Carpenter building lasted about 119 years before succumbing to an unexpected fire in early January. It sat in the middle of town opposite the railroad tracks, kitty-corner from the depot, along U.S. Highway 61 welcoming train passengers and later motorists for over a century. It is not hard to believe that when it started as a goods store back in the 1890′s it would have housed many interesting conversations between the shop keeper and patrons even before it became a steak house welcoming dinner conversations in the 1970s. Throughout its life it was a staple, or rather a member, of the community.

Needless to say, when we were done with the art session he came away with a train going across a railroad bridge (he painted the sky, I the landscape and bridge, we both applied the train stickers) and I had finished the detailed west elevation and footprint of Carpenter’s Steakhouse. I had been working on it off and on since January and I can now look at it with some sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. 13 windows, 1 door, signage, and enclosed porch all perfectly placed and drawn to scale to the best of my abilities.

The photos I went off of were not ideal as many were angle shots from the corners. The only straight-on shot I had which maintained proportions was of the front lower-level after the fire. Yet, combined with Google satellite and Bing Bird’s Eye imagery as well as shots taken from Google Street view, I was able to come up with suggested proportions and work them out. There was a lot of tweaking, erasing, re-calculations, and re-measuring, but in the end I think I was able to come up with a near perfect N scale (1:160) representation.

I did learn some lessons. First, when you choose a subject, and it still exists in the physical world, go out there and snap some photos. (It is too late for Carpenter’s, but not too late for other of my proposed subjects.) Take some directly facing an elevation at multiple parallel locations. I found out that even an 80 foot building lends itself to distortion of proportions on either end when shot straight-on in the middle. I should have taken some smaller shots of the front exterior at regular intervals parallel to the building.

Second, the scale on satellite imagery are approximations for greater distances and don’t hold up well for measuring buildings. Building edges are blurred and depending upon the angle the satellite was, can skew measurements. I ended up using a semi-trailer, which I reasoned was 53 feet long, as a rough measurement guide.

Third, once you figure out a proportion in a photograph, write it down. Using common widths of doors and windows, I was able to determine ratios for conversion. Working from several photographs I was able to move quicker when I didn’t have to re-calculate each time. Also, as mentioned before, depending upon angle, proportions of  large object can change within a picture. Segment the picture and write all proportions down.

Footprint

Finally, it is okay to readjust your measurements. The steakhouse fluctuated from between 70 and 85 feet before resting at 83 feet long. As I would work through drawing it I found some things didn’t fit properly. I ended up fudging a few measurements here and there (I still don’t know the exact shutter widths–16 inches maybe?) and only cared if it was within a ballpark and that it “looked right.” By looking right I mean that windows were placed relative to other objects in the pictures and didn’t appear to be too close or too far apart. While I was working on the west elevation I ended up refining my footprint several times (even though I had before that point considered it “done”) to account for new measurements. Despite this cumbersome effort, in the end I think of it as “refining the outcome as more data points become known.”

At this point I don’t expect any more refinements to the measurements to come about. First, I don’t have many pictures of the sides, I don’t have any of the back, and there weren’t many windows or doors there anyway. A blank wall is easy to scale and I can take artistic liberties with what I think should go there. Secondly, the front is the money shot, and if that doesn’t look right, it is not representative of the subject at all.

I’m not quite sure when I will commence on a scale model. I don’t really have time or space for that as of yet. I do have a few other buildings I would like to draw but they will wait. In the mean-time I will just make sure I have the right pictures of them and enjoy the satisfaction of the completion of this “little” art project. My son (and my wife) certainly took in satisfaction on his picture.

Train going across bridge. This is a painting my son (age 3) and I made. He painted the sky and I painted the ground and bridge. We both applied the stickers.

Picking and choosing is a hard process when someone wishes to model a location in a particular period with some historical accuracy. From looking at this Web site, it shouldn’t be hard to realize that I have settled on two possible locations, eastern central Nebraska centered around Fremont, Nebraska, as well as the Skally Line between St. Paul and Duluth, Minnesota. Colorado narrow gauge was a close third, but it would be expensive as Nn3 equipment is pricey and not readily available. Also, since it is not in close proximity to me it would be hard to model first hand. (I’m still holding out for a double shelf layout, Nebraska on bottom, Minnesota on top. I’m not ready to cut either one yet until I am met with reality.)

Historical significance was important to me when choosing a location to model. Since my interest lies in local history dating back to the 1880s, choosing an exact era was a little difficult. I loved steam, the old west, and such, but the modern operations, which I could readily observe and long to emulate, would not be able to be incorporated.

I’ve got my mind set on the 1980s, as that was my childhood and many historic structures still remained. As I do my research many demolition dates took place in the 1980s. Many structures of historical significance still remain standing, which allows me to model them as well, except I am hard pressed to find a modern example of a clap board sided store that has withstood the last century of progress. I loved the clap board sided buildings of yesteryear. One other benefit, is that Fremont, even today, still has some brick streets, so it wouldn’t be too far of a stretch to have a brick Main and 1st Street on the layout.

Rolling stock? We’ll, as a visit to a club layout recently revealed, replicating authentic operations during operating sessions can be done, while at other times just pulling out the old steamers and have them chug down the line past the modern buildings and vehicles is just fine. There are no model railroad police, and the model steamers really don’t need water tanks readily available.

It is going to be really important to focus on including the essence of the places and eras instead of replicating every little detail. Over and over again I read from the experts that a problem beginners (though I have 3 years past experience) is the lack of focus on manageable pieces. Careful planning is essential.

I will no doubt have 100s of pages of notes, 1,000s of photographs, and many books to base my layout on. (You’ll see all that as you browse the companion sites rrpics and rrwiki). I will also have put in many hours of CAD design (at a much later date) and 6-7 years of planning before I glue the first piece of N scale flex track to foam core.

I’ll talk about my long list of railroads and main lines another day. Now that is a list that needs narrowing down.