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Trains-N-TownsTM, the Official Newsletter of BIGIndoorTrains.com and BIGChristmasTrains.com
This newsletter is for people who like O scale trains and Christmas trains, including people who combine On30 or O gauge trains with collectible villages. It is produced in conjunction with the Big Indoor TrainsTM and Big Christmas Trains web sites.
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- On the other hand, if you don't want to receive our e-mail updates, please e-mail me with a "Please Unsubscribe" message (worded any way you wish), and we will graciously remove you from our list.
- Also, if you would like to subscribe to our free newsletter for garden railroaders (people running big trains outside), please join the Family Garden Trains Mailing List. By the way, you can subscribe to either, both, or neither, and we will just be glad to be of service, no matter what you decide.
In this Issue
We're obviously looking forward to the holidays. One way we kicked our Christmas celebration off early was to have an "open house" on our outdoor railroad. It included setting up an On30 train outside with a village of ceramic houses - not something I'd ordinarily recommend, but it would work on a porch, I think.
I'll have a full report by next newsletter, but in the meantime, you'll have to be satisfied with the preliminary report that LED lights are a whole lot richer in color than the regular light strands I've been using. That plus the fact that they use about 1/10th the electricity makes me think that the next outdoor project along this line may be all-LED.
Although Howard Lamey is still coming up with great projects faster than I can get them posted, I've only had time to post one this month - a "glitterhouse" synagogue that will make your Christmas village just a bit more inclusive. Please accept this project as a sign of our best wishes for everyone reading this newsletter.
In addition, we have been working very hard to add new "primer" articles that answer readers' questions about Christmas trains, about the scales and gauges of big indoor trains, and so on. We've had a lot of that information buried in our various sites, but by setting up a "Big Christmas TrainsTM" primer page to complement our "BigIndoorTrainsTM" primer page, we hope to make the new and old information more accessible, especially to folks just getting into these hobbies.
Because this will be our last newsletter before Thanksgiving, I've included some holiday links I hope you'll enjoy. In the meantime, please have a great Thanksgiving and holiday season!
Topics discussed in this update include:
Every commercial Christmas village includes one or more churches. But they leave out a structure that is important in many communities, the synagogue. This new glitterhouse project by Howard Lamey is our way of saying "Welcome to our community, and may each reader have the best possible holiday season."
Free, downloadable plans and graphics for this inexpensive project are included. Click on the following link for more information.
In late 2004, we started the Big Christmas Trains buyer's guide to answer questions about trains for Christmas trees or villages. When certain questions kept turning up, I began writing articles about those. But I never had one page for pulling all of those articles together in one place until now. More articles will be added as time goes by. But this page should get you "on the right track" when choosing any train to use at Christmas or coming up with ideas for displaying your Christmas trains and accessories. Please click on the following link to jump to the Christmas Train Primer page.
This article describes more options for picking out or making Christmas villages, as well as for choosing trains for your towns. This article answers questions like "How Big are Christmas Villages and the Trains that Go With Them?" "Where do Christmas Towns Come From?" "Where do Christmas Trains Come From?" and "What if You Don't Have Room for a 38" Track Circle?"
Click the following link for more information:
A detailed description of the difference between scales like O and HO and gauges like O gauge, On30, HO gauge, HOn36, and so on. From Big Indoor TrainsTM
Click the following link for more information:
Seasonal Links
Since this will be our last newsletter before Thanksgiving, here are a few other articles you may find useful, largely from our Family Christmas OnlineTM site:
Connect with Your Roots - If you tend to connect with your "Christmas Train" roots during the Holiday season, this might be a good idea to check out our article "What Do Trains Have to Do With Christmas?" It describes the 150-year-old-tradition of playing with toy trains at Christmas. Click on the following link for more information:
On the other hand, if you share your home with any Christmas village lovers, they might enjoy a related article, "A Brief History of Christmas Villages". Click the following link for more information:
Thanksgiving, Then, and Then, and Now - Giving thanks for a good harvest is as old as civilization - so why do Americans associate that with "Indian corn" and people in funny hats? Click the following link to find out:
We also have what might possibly be the Internet's most comprehensive and user-friendly article on How to Roast a Turkey. Click on the following link for more information:
Looking ahead, we have detailed instructions on the Best Traditional Rollout Sugar Cookies. They're the kind my mother made, of course, and a tradition I've been glad to pass to my children. Click the following link for more information:
If you're still trying to channel your inner Clark Griswold, here is a new link to some great outdoor decorating projects that Popular Mechanics magazine published in the 1960s. Did you or your dad make any of these? Lots of folks did. So can you, if you're not afraid of post-Sputnik nostalgia. To learn more, click the link below:
And finally, when you are decorating your home and trees for Christmas, remember NOT to throw away bad light strands without scavenging useful project wire from them first. An article on that subject is at the following link:
Christmas Trains Shopping Note:
Finally, since this site's expenses are partially covered by advertising income, and I have a lot of links to trains and accessories on my pages, I get a lot of questions about finding certain trains, etc. I've recently become aware that many of the suppliers who usually sell Large Scale and certain On30 and O gauge trains online experienced disappointing results last year. And as a result, they have bought relatively little stock this year. Ironically, sales have picked up. I know they wish they had bought more, but most of them won't get more stock in time to put it back online before Christmas. So more and more of the "check stock" links on my sites are blank, even for some of my favorite trains that I know will be easy to find again in, say, February. The short version is that if you're thinking about buying a specific Large Scale, On30, or O gauge train for Christmas, don't wait too long, or you may have trouble tracking down the train you wanted.
Keep in Touch
Each month, we get more interest in this newsletter, in the site, and in the trains and towns we discuss. We welcome your questions as indicators of what we should be working on next (also, we always try to answer reader questions quickly). In addition, if you have any photos, tips, or articles you'd like to share with your fellow hobbyists, please let us know. The hobby grows best when we all learn together.
In the meantime, please accept our very best wishes for a great holiday season!
Paul Race
BigIndoorTrains.com
BigChristmasTrains.com
FamilyGardenTrains.com
To view the Trains-N-TownsTM newsletter for October, 2009, click on the following link:
http://bigindoortrains.com/trains_n_towns/09_10_newsletter_indoor.htm
To read more, or to look at recommended Garden Railroading and Display Railroad products, you may click on the index pages below.
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New Article: Building the Pine Mountain Valley Synagogue
New Article: Christmas Train Primer
New Article: Choosing Christmas Trains and Villages
New Article: Scales and Gauges - They're not the Same