Annual "Train Under the Christmas Tree" Thread

Fun random fact of the day:

Before the invention of the Train people would run a Wagon on your mom.

It’s glorious

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I'm thinking about getting one of those sets that goes on top of the cabinets in the kitchen. Where would one find something like that?

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You would likely want a G scale train, by LGB. They are large, about the size (but not length) of the trains in my picture. You would also go with a smaller scale. The problem is that you need a train that will run at a very consistent speed, so it won't take a tumble off the shelf.

The vintage trains have no speed consistency.

The standard gauge trains are weird. Usually, collectors won't run their high grade stuff. But, in standard gauge, they are so big and heavy that they are very unlikely to dump over or derail. There's one guy (kind of an insufferable showoff) who runs a 20's train that he bought at an auction for over $200k.

I have the inexpensive battery power Lionel Polar Express, but I keep it at my parents' place so my nieces can enjoy it as well. Seeing as none of us are going out there this year, it is in a box and not going anyway. Not great...

I have a special attachment to the Polar Express. The movie used a real train as a model for the CGI, and come to find out the real train once went right past our camp in the little town that we buy groceries in and go to the bars and coffee shop in.

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I always dreamed of buying a nice electric train set. Everyone from my childhood was plastic trash and ran on batteries that gave you about 10 minutes of fun before you were changing the 6 D batteries.

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First, I'm going to use your joke with the train nerds.

Vintage Lionel trains from the 50's are available for a reasonable price, as long as you don't care about boxes or high grade condition. There are some places that will take a train of that vintage and work through the mechanics to where it runs perfectly. It is not an overly expensive process.

I have one of those train sets where the tracks attach to the tree trunk. So the train is 4 feet in the air running around the branches of the tree. Its been a while since I set it up though. I may have to try again this year.

Great stuff. When I was a kid, my family had an awesome electric Lionel set, which was unfortunately lost in a move. I still miss that thing.

Every Christmas when I walk into Menards and see their train things out, I get an itch to fill up a cart and blow a few hundred dollars. I haven't done it yet though.