On Sunday we attended the Model Train Festival at the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma.  We went with my cousins Cheryl and Virg and, while the guys schmoozed with the exhibitors and checked out the technical aspects of gauge and scale, Cheryl and I admired the scenery (teeny-tiny people and cows and pigs oh my!) and took a trip back in time.

Several of the layouts replicated areas of Washington from the 1950s.  Though most of my real-life train travel took place in the forties and covered the Oakland, California to Portland, Oregon route, the scenes were ever-so familiar.  The trains rushed around bends, through tunnels and over the mountains, passing farms and pulp mills and freight trains going the other way.  I was transported, so to speak!

I also thought about the year – probably 1942 when I was six – that I really, really wanted an electric train.  So did my buddy Jimmy who lived across the street from us on Versailles Avenue in California.  His wish came true; I got a doll house, instead.

It’s not that I didn’t like my doll house… for a few days, anyway.  I placed the furniture where I wanted it, showed it to my girlfriends who (of course) moved the furniture around, much to my irritation.  Once I had replaced all those little tables and chairs and beds and bureaus, that was it.  The doll house sat “on display” in my room, gradually getting buried by other toys.  Shades of things to come!  To this day, once I’ve arranged the furniture in a house, it stays where placed; I‘m definitely not a re-arranger.

Jimmy, on the other hand, played with his train day after day.  It was set up in his basement and I was invited to come and play anytime.  Unfortunately, it was Jimmy who was the Engineer and got to man the switches and rearrange the tracks.  I watched.  Not satisfactory.  But it was better than nothing as I learned very soon when ‘nothing’ happened.  Jimmy broke his arm by getting it caught in the ringer while helping his mom do the wash.  It must have been his dominant arm because playing with the train ceased then and there.

Not long after that, Jimmy and his train moved away.  My birthday came and I got roller skates – the kind with a skate key that I wore on a ribbon around my neck.  All thoughts of playing with electric trains disappeared… until last Sunday.

Nyel’s S-gauge electric train is boxed up and in our back room somewhere.  I’ve yet to see it and each Christmas I try to convince him that it needs to come out and join the family.  So far, I’ve had no more success than I did with my folks seventy years ago!  Maybe next year…