These days, the traditions to fill out the weekend after Thanksgiving are almost as varied as the feast itself. Putting up Christmas decorations, consuming leftovers, and either taking advantage of or consciously avoiding sales serves as a denouement for the holiday. Thanksgiving break has also serves opening week for most of the Polar Express and other holiday trains hosted on tourist railroads across the country. These events often involve an entire year’s worth of preparation and temporarily increasing staff by dozens or even hundreds of people, but they do pay off. The busiest holiday trains draw in tens of thousands in a season, and many of those customers cite a ride on one of these Christmas trains as an important part of their holiday tradition. The Polar Express and other unbranded Christmas trains may be a fairly new phenomena, but the association of real and toy trains with Christmas paraphernalia goes back almost as far as the creation of the railroads themselves. One can assume that children began to request that toy trains soon after the railroad appeared in their town. Toymakers and model railroad manufacturers were of course quick to leverage this in their advertisements, and trains have become a been a staple of Christmas-themed print advertising for all manner of products.
The digital age hasn't slowed the trend. Consider the iconic commercial the NKP 765 bringing a shipment of Coke-a-Cola into station, and the wonderfully progressive Lincoln commercial currently running on television. (This is shaping up to be an especially good season for railroad-themed adds: Wes Anderson’s train-themed short film dropped just as I finished the final edit on this post.)
Christmas trains aren’t just for advertising, either. Over the years trains have become a form of Christmas decoration in and of themselves. How many reading this have a model train around their tree now, or several train-shaped ornaments on their tree, or a lighted train out in their front yard? I would wager a few cups of cocoa that the percentage is high--they are certainly well represented in my household.
Regardless of that these advertisements are actually selling, none of these would have quite the same emotional impact if any other kind of vehicle was substituted. For the viewers, as is true with so many aspects of railfanning in general, the appeal is about more than just the equipment. The Christmas season brings us together with friends and family; trains were, for many years, the exclusive method by which those reunions were accomplished. Likewise, the gifts under the tree would also have arrived over the rails, and would have been delivered to the station first.
Perhaps most poignant in an era in which intercity passenger trains have all but been eliminated and competition has pushed freight service out of the visible eye, is that Christmas and the railroads both compel the imagination. The holiday allows adults to pretend, to create an illusion, to step into a role ostensibly put on for the benefit of their children. That dovetails neatly with the allure of pretending to be someone else, headed somewhere else that brings so many into the train enthusiast fold. Who among us hasn’t picked up a toy Christmas train and overlooked its gaudy colors and impossibly simplified running gear, then indulged himself in the fantasy of being at the throttle, guiding a fast freight across a windswept plain or navigating through the pikes and swales of a winding mountain route? The call of simpler times is powerful. Back when trains like these ran, we tell ourselves, there was no need to recenter ourselves on faith and family and friends during the Holidays, because there were fewer things to distract us from them in the first place.
As trees go up, presents are wrapped, and families venture out in search of festivities and memories, it’s hard to imagine the season feeling quite the same if the railroad aspect--whether we are talking real trains or just their representation-- is removed. And that’s exactly as it should be. --HKE
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