I’ve been having much more fun than a man of my age should be having, playing with my train set – vintage Lionel “O” gauge – set up on the floor in one end of my barn. I began building this collection over the past several years, in an attempt to re-create, as best as my aging memory would allow, the set-up my father and I had put together in our basement when I was a very small boy. Alas, all of the trains I had as a child were stolen out of my mother’s house in Jersey City many years ago; but I’ve bought an engine here and some track there, slowly snapping up 50’s era cars and accessories where I could find them at antique shops or flea markets.
This collection was recently augmented by a most generous gift from my wife’s best friend, whose own dad had recently left his house to move into assisted living. One of the things she came across while cleaning out the place prior to putting it on the market were several cartons of trains (in their original boxes), track and accessories, all dating from the late 1950’s. No one in her family wanted it, and she was actually going to throw it all out. She mentioned this to my wife while they were both attending their 40th High School reunion some months ago, and the upshot of that conversation was that several boxes and bags of Lionel products were delivered to me (through the good offices of my daughter and her young man, who schlepped the stuff up here from New York) just in time to be a most wondrous 58th birthday surprise.
This collection was recently augmented by a most generous gift from my wife’s best friend, whose own dad had recently left his house to move into assisted living. One of the things she came across while cleaning out the place prior to putting it on the market were several cartons of trains (in their original boxes), track and accessories, all dating from the late 1950’s. No one in her family wanted it, and she was actually going to throw it all out. She mentioned this to my wife while they were both attending their 40th High School reunion some months ago, and the upshot of that conversation was that several boxes and bags of Lionel products were delivered to me (through the good offices of my daughter and her young man, who schlepped the stuff up here from New York) just in time to be a most wondrous 58th birthday surprise.
This gift has spurred me to begin something I’ve thought about for a long while; namely, building a real train display, complete with multiple track layouts, bridges, tunnels, landscaping – you name it. It will be a while until I can properly prepare the space for all of this to occupy, and so for the time being I’ve set up some track, a few buildings, and some working accessories temporarily until I can begin the project in earnest. I’ve done this for two reasons; first, because it allows me to test the functionality of the cars, the accessories and the various switches and relays I’ve bought, and second, because it is just so much fun sitting on the floor and watching the trains go around, hearing the whistle blow, and watching the little flagman come out of his hut, waving his lantern as the train rolls by.
On Father’s Day I found a set of passenger cars; items for which I had been on the hunt for a good long while, at a local antique shop. I brought them home and took them out to the barn, where I hitched them to an engine to test them out. I watched them go round and round the track, and as I did I was overwhelmed – it is the only word I can use – by a memory. I was six years old, certainly no older but perhaps a year or two younger. It was a winter evening; in fact, it was close to Christmas. My father and I were in the basement, working on the train layout together. He was putting the finishing touches on what I think was a raised trestle so that we could run a second set of trains – those very passenger cars, as I recall -- above an already completed layout on the board. I was doing what I always did, fetching and carrying for him as he busied himself connecting and fastening down track, cutting wood to shim the trestles that held the track above the table, and running wire from the Rotating Beacon through a hole in the table, under the layout, and connecting it to the transformer. At one point he realized that something was missing, though I don’t remember what it was; perhaps we were short of track, or we needed a switch or a relay, or maybe he just wanted to go and buy another car, but he bundled me up and we set out together, walking in the glow of the streetlights through a lightly falling snow.
He was holding my hand, and what I remember most about it was the feeling of happiness I had just being with him. In those days (if I am six, then it is 1959), the shopping districts of the city were all decorated with lights, wreaths and garlands strung across the streets; the stores played holiday music and there were brightly lit Christmas displays in every window. It was so exciting, because it was almost Christmas; and it was the most wonderful thing to be out in the cold night air, walking with my Dad to the toy store, leaving a trail of our paired footprints (his so big, and mine so little) through the snow. We finally made our way there, my father bought what he needed, and we walked home as the snow began to fall harder and faster. When we got to the house we headed straight downstairs to do whatever it was with whatever we had needed that compelled us to set out on our journey in the first place. Our work done for the night, we came upstairs. My mother had made us both something warm to drink, so Dad and I sat together on the couch in our parlor; and I can still, after all these years, remember the feel of his arm around me and how safe and comforting it was just to be there with him.
The trains I've been buying, and those that were so kindly given into my care, are, after all, only objects; and objects are worthless without context or memory. These trains are a link that stretches out over the almost fifty years that he's been gone, to remind me that this man, my father, can yet be truly present to me here in the home I’ve made for myself and my family, where I am now the Dad. I find that since I’ve set them up I play with the trains almost every day. I do so, I think, because in that moment, sitting on the floor in my barn, I know he is there with me, as though he had never left. While those trains circle around and again on their track I can have him, once more, sitting beside me with his arm around me, and I close my eyes and know that I am happy again.
