One of my favorite memories

[cnwfan51]

    While growing up in Omaha in the 50s and 60s one of my best memories is of the 40 foot  christmas tree in the main waiting room in the Omaha Union Station , If you have to book Omahas Union Station there is a photo of one of them on page 66 I think. The really cool thing is that the Western Heritage Museam continues this great trradition. My questions is this. Do any of you remmeber anything like that in your hometown or in your travels?  

[tomikawaTT]

Since I was born in New York, I well remember the humongutree in Rockefeller Center.  Finding it and cutting it were newspaper staples in the decade after VJ day.

No visible trains around it (Just subways and the roofed-over NYC Grand Central switchwork.)  We had to settle for ice skaters.

Chuck

[Kootenay Central]

Around Christmas, Eaton's in Montreal, ( a large Department store with-then, still manually-operated elevators with those clock-face-and-hand floor annunciators above the door and red-for-down and green-for-up electric signal lights and a lone-remaining classic narrow wooden-slatted-stepped escalator ) installed their 'Eaton's Train'.

This was an approx 15 inch gauge electric train with a Built-at-CPR'S Angus Shops, Montreal, CPR Royal Hudson with several passenger cars and a caboose.

Santa was there, too.

Toronto also had a train, a CNR 6400 streamlined Northern and train.

Kids looked foreward to the train ride almost as much as the holiday itself, which included a small gift at the end.

Involved a special trip Downtown by streetcar and a walk thru all the stores looking at the goodies.

Model trains played a big part of the displays and covered what seemed to be acres of floors.

Everyone thought Lionel or American Flyer for Xmas. The latter did offer nice PAs and Bs!!

If there was time, we would sometimes go home on a real train, with steam up front, but, we liked the Eaton's train more, as it was not as intimidating as standing next to a real hissing, pounding engine at the depot.

Staybolt heads leaking were a worry, even then.

There was a Veteran from the War outside on the street,who had lost an arm who played a hand-crank wheeled 'organ' selling pencils from a cup, and he waved the stump of his arm around, scaring the small children.

Ugly rumours abounded he went home in his own Packard every nite and that he had lost his arm jumping trains.

In the Sixties they pulled up the steel on the Eaton's trains as Diesels, automobiles and progress changed the real Railways forever.

A memory for Christmas!

Thank You!

 

P.S.

Photo of Toronto's Eaton's Train w/ CNR Northern built at CNR's Pointe St Charles Shops in Montreal.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/Demonstration_of_Eaton%27s_Toyville_train.jpg

Montreal Eaton's Train w/Royal Hudson was similar. Engineer rode in Tender.

[CG-Rider]

Hi,

 

Boy...what a memory indeed !!!  My parents were good friends with a chap who worked at Eaton's...I got to see, savour and ride that train from the age of 4 !!!!   and for many xmas's to follow....

I already had demonstrated '' levels of excitement'' at te sights and sounds of trains at a younger age...but that Eaton's train and the Lionel set which followed Xmas '45 when I was 5  just about did me in: I was hooked.

Thanks for re-activating that lovely part of the ''good old times''.

Cheers

CG

 

 

[The Commodore]

 My family used to travel by train to New Orleans to shop several times a year for clothing etc. I remember that Maison Blache the New Orleans Department store always had a lot of Christmas Decorations and I think they had a big train layout in the toy department.  It was always a treat to watch all the different operating cars and passenger equipment. Of course, traveling by Southern Railroad was a treat as well especially breakfast in the dining car.  This would have been in the 1940's.

Merry Christmas and a Festive Turning of the Calendar to one and all.

 

[caketrain]

 I remember when I first received my train from my friend, Linebeck. It was very plain, but I loved it all the same. For years, I had only driven steamboats, so moving on to trains was a big thing for me!

 I will never forget my first train!!!

[route_rock]

  My favorite train memory? Oh I have a bunch but I remember my mom and grandma reading to me a book called 'Steam train coming!" I LOVED that book. somehow over the years I lost it and had been searching for it but couldnt remember the title ( talk about hard t find lol) Well last year my grandma died and a few days after she had passed my girlfriend gave me a package. She had found it on Ebay after taking up the search! It was a sad bittersweet moment, but I did read it and have some GREAT memories.I miss my grandma but I will always remember her reading to me about trains.

  Also here is a neat thing. I try to collect older Trains magazines and found the one for my birth month and year. Sept 1971 and the cover? Steam train a comin!Not the same book but a real neat coincidence.

[Bob-Fryml]

During the mid-1950s I knew it was Christmas when mom, my sister, and I had "lunch under the tree" in the Walnut Room of Marshall Field's State Street store.  Always on that very day I'd get so excited at the sight of the big Lionel Trains display and operating layout found in the toys department of that same store.

As I grew older into my teenage years, "lunch under the tree" remained, but added to that was a stop to peruse the display shelves of O-gauge scale models at All-Nations Hobby Shop.  I can vividly remember the large assortment of boxcars decorated in what we'd today call "Fallen Flags" paint schemes (they were very contemporary then) and of finely decorated, O-scale "Insull Interurban" equipment - particularly North Shore and "Roarin' Elgin."

Finally during the six Christmas seasons before the inception of Amtrak, my head couldn't quite get into the Holiday spirit unless I spent at least one day "doing All-Nations," "doing Marshall Field's," and then spending a few hours freezing my tail off standing along the southern most platforms of Chicago Union Station watching the Q's finest arrive and depart.  Watching those big E-units roar in-and-out with the likes of the North Coast Limited, Empire Builder, and California Zephyr in tow remains a vivid memory with me.  Sometimes I'd even hang around long enough to watch the Pennsy's flagship roll eastbound for Gotham and the absolutely spotless Denver Zephyr accelerate westbound for the mythical Valhalla of Colorado.  A ride home either on a C.& N.W. commuter train or back to school on an Evanston Express finished out the day quite nicely.    

[daveklepper]

When it comes simply to finest train memories, trips on the Rio Grande Zephyr, much earlier 13-year-old trips on the Suncook Valley mixerd train, 16 and 17 year old trips on the LVT Liberty Bell Limited, the Laural Line, D&H Scranton-Carbondale, West Penn, and every trip I ever rode on the North Shore, and every trip I rode with Richard Horstman's 353, Mountain View, and PRR 120 and with Maurey Kleibolt to Colorado come tops.

 But Holiday season memories?  The best was coming to visit my mother in NY the winter after Dad passed on in early summer 1955, leaving Fort Bragg, and boarding one of the ACL streamliners in Fayetteville and finding my old friend John Masters as matre de in the dining car and not getting only a great dinner but the chance to exchange memories and current happenings in our lives.