The gifts under the tree were stamped ‘NYC’

Anyone reading this blog probably does the same thing I do every year when it comes to the holiday season: associate it with trains. The festivities go hand in red glove with train travel, maybe some new railroad books, and probably most often an O-gauge train under the tree.

I watch the movie A Christmas Story every year at least once, and my favorite moment is when we see Ralphie and his little brother falling asleep to the sounds of steam whistles in the wintry night. Writer Jean Shepherd’s fictional town of Hohman is a stand-in for his real hometown of Hammond, Ind., so I always think those kids are hearing Nickel Plate Berkshires in their sleep.

So what do I associate with my Christmases? That’s easy — it’s a set of six small New York Central antiques my parents gave me, one per year, over the six years I was in junior and senior high school, plus my freshman year in college. I was way past the breathless childhood excitement of the holidays, but even at the jaded ages of 16 or 17, I couldn’t wait to see what bit of banged-up old metal was gift wrapped under the tree.

My gifts aren’t the kinds of items that would excite a knowledgeable collector of railroadiana. They include three brakeman’s lanterns, a track- or car-inspector’s lantern, one small oil can, and a gorgeous engineer’s long-spout oil can. Most of them are stamped either NYC or NYCL, my hometown railroad. 

Although my dad had the stronger family railroad roots (a father and grandfather on the Chicago & Eastern Illinois), I’ve always suspected it was my mom who gets the credit for those Christmas presents. She wasn’t a hardcore antique collector, but she was an amateur historian of some note, and she had a discerning eye. She knew what to look for and where to find it.

The first in this series of gifts came at Christmas in 1965 — the inspector’s lantern — and although I loved it, I was suspicious of its origins, although I never said that to my parents. I was familiar with the common brakeman’s lantern, but not this one. I even feared it was a farm lantern, something of zero interest for me. But I kept my concerns to myself.

Then, one day several years later, my fears were put to rest. The November 1972 issue of Trains arrived, featuring a gallery of 1920s photographs by the noted portraitist of the American worker, Lewis Hine. There, in a photo on page 32, a young Pennsylvania Railroad track walker emerges from inspecting a New York tunnel. In his right hand is a dead ringer for my inspection lantern. What a relief!

These Christmas memories had me wondering about what some of my friends had received over the years, so I checked in with a few of them. One is a lovely memory from writer, PRR historian, and recently retired Norfolk Southern railroader Dan Cupper.

“It was the Christmas of 1955,” Dan writes, “and I was five years old. I had asked Santa for a Lionel train set. On Christmas Eve, I went to bed in my second-floor bedroom of my parents’ house in Lewistown, Pa. It was an old house with a coal furnace that heated the upper floors by convection through floor grates. I was too excited to sleep, and heard some noises downstairs. I crept out of bed, went over to the heating grate and flipped the lever that opened its vanes to reveal the scene below.

“There were my dad and uncle assembling O-gauge sections of track on a 4-by-8-foot platform. At that moment, my suspicions about St. Nick were confirmed and my lifelong love for trains was further cemented.

“In the morning, I bounded downstairs to find a Lionel train on the track, ready to go at the touch of my fingertips. But not just any Lionel train. The engine was a model of the Pennsylvania Railroad’s experimental Class S2 6-8-6 turbine locomotive, and the lettering on the tender read PENNSYLVANIA. Even at age 5, the significance of a red keystone on the smokebox and the name on the tender wasn’t lost on me!”

I suspect that, like Dan, toy trains were a part of Christmas for a lot us. My first and only trainset showed up under the tree in 1955, an American Flyer with a Reading 4-4-2 and a few freight cars. The banged up old Atlantic is still on my office shelf. 

For a lot of us, a subscription to Trains magazine probably began as a Christmas present. Indiana-based writer William B. Stewart relates this story:

“My mother was the fashion and home furnishings editor of the Indianapolis Star. One of her favorite co-workers was Richard S. Simons, a member of the Star Sunday Magazine  staff and a genuine railroad historian. When Dick learned that he and I shared paralleling interests in railroading, he gave me, as a Christmas gift, my first subscription to Trains. I was eight years old, and from that point on I eagerly awaited the monthly arrival of the manila envelope from Milwaukee and quickly absorbed every page of every issue.”

For a California pal, railroad photographer and retired KABC cameraman Dave Busse, Christmas brought the train ride of a lifetime.

“It was Christmas, 1973,” Dave writes. “Mom and dad gave my brother Dan and me two tickets for the Intermountain Chapter NRHS’s ‘25th Anniversary of the California Zephyr’ Denver–Salt Lake trip in late March 1974. The trip utilized the Rio Grande Zephyr with every piece of ex-CZ rolling stock the railroad had; dining car menus were custom printed for the occasion, and it was the closest we would ever get to the real CZ. I met people on that fan trip 44 years ago — Ted Benson and Don Jilson — who are friends to this very day.”

If you’re really lucky, you’ll have a parent who’s a railfan, most likely your dad. In the case of journalist Justin Franz, it was Tim Franz, himself a former railroader and longtime railroad photographer, who kept stoking a son’s passions.

“There have always been a lot of railroad-related gifts under the tree, from model trains to books,” Justin recalls. “One particularly cool gift, at least to this Maine native, was a few years ago when my Dad picked up a pair of old Bangor & Aroostook cocktail glasses for me. They hold a prized spot in the liquor cabinet.

“But the gifts that have always had the biggest impact were books I got from my dad — especially great railroad photography books. Some of the titles that come to mind are Greg McDonnell’s Passing Trains  and Rites of Passage, Ted Benson’s One Track Mind, and Richard Loveman and Mel Patrick’s Never on Wednesday.”

And what of those NYC baubles I got under the tree? They’re right within arm’s reach as I write this, lined up on my office shelf, reminding me of unforgettable Christmases past. I’m guessing you have some similar memories of your own. I’d love to hear about them in the Comments section below. Merry Christmas!