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Trains-N-TownsTM, the Official Newsletter of BIGIndoorTrains.com, BIGChristmasTrains.com, and HalloweenTrains.com
This newsletter is for people who like O scale, O gauge, S scale, 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, Big Christmas TrainsTM, and HalloweenTrains.comTM web sites.
- If you did not get this Trains-N-TownsTM newsletter through your own e-mail, and you would like to get the newsletters in the future, please join our Trains-N-TownsTM Mailing List
- 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
As always, we have more projects in the works, so stay tuned.
Finally, please accept our wishes for a great rest of the year. And please enjoy any time you can spend with your family in the coming months.
Topics discussed in this update include:
From BigIndoorTrains.com and HalloweenTrains.com - If you like setting up indoor trains and towns for Halloween, you should be pleased to see a new Halloween-Themed building project that combines vintage tinplate style with Halloween-themed colors and signage - a fun craft project that will bring October 30 to any mantel, shelf, or indoor railroad.
To see the new Tinplate-Inspired Halloween storefront building project, click on the following link:
 Also, due to popular demand, we've reposted Paul's Spook Hill Chronicles, a family-friendly online Halloween novel. Imagine you were a widow with two children running from your late husband's gambling "buddies," only to find that the place you had taken refuge showed every sign of being haunted, or at least of being very strange.
To jump to the introduction, click on the following link:
 To visit the HalloweenTrains.com pages, click on the following link:
Or take a look at some great Christmas-themed trains and related projects:
These days it seems like a stunning new cardboard Christmas "putz" house project is added to the Cardboard Christmas discussion forums.  If you sign up for the forum, you can tell right away whether any posts have been added since the last time you visited, because the snowmen are looking surprised. Many of the techniques and materials our builders and restorers use will work on any holiday village.
To visit the Cardboard Christmas Discussion forums, click on the following link:
We're already planning our sixth annual Christmas-themed open railroad with lots of entertainment options for the whole family. Once again, if you're are going to be anywhere near Springfield, Ohio in early November, put November 9 on your calendar.
To learn more about our November 9 Christmas-themed open railroad, and a few other regional Christmas-themed railroad activities, please click on the following link:
I know it sounds like another sales pitch, but when I don't post these reminders (even on the "wrong" newsletters) I wind up getting angry e-mails from disappointed readers later on. If you set up an indoor O scale or On30 railroad or seasonal village, you may find this helpful. You may know that Hawthorne Village, now part of Bradford Exhange, used to offer several heirloom quality On30 train collections built on Bachmann's On30 chassis (and given a lifetime mechanical guarantee from Bachmann). The paint jobs and detailing were based on art by people like Al Agnew, Norman Rockwell, and especially the late Thomas Kinkade. They also made special On30 trains for Coca Cola collectors and fans of the Rudolph television special. All of these sets are "limited editions," which means that when they are sold out they are gone, period.
What you may not know is that Hawthorne Village, stung by the recession, stopped ordering new On30 trains in 2009 and has since been "filling the gap" with trains they already had on order and new HO trains that do not look as good with holiday villages and are, frankly, lower in quality. Again, a few of the On30 sets may still be around a year or two from now, but once they are gone they are really gone for good. Collectors "in the know" are already making a run on certain sets, especially the Coke and Rudolph sets.
By the way, I am not saying you should buy these as a financial investment that you can resell at some time in the future for more money. Many Hawthorne Village train collections virtually never reappear on the secondary market once they've been purchased by a family, so there's no way to guess what they'd be worth if they did. All I'm saying is that if you have your heart set on a set that is still available today, don't assume it will be available by December 1.
To jump right to our Hawthorne Village Christmas Train pages, please click on any of the following links:
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. All of the hobbies we report grow best when we all learn together.
In the meantime, please accept our very best wishes for a great autumn and holiday season!
Paul Race
BigIndoorTrains.com(tm)
BigChristmasTrains.com(tm)
HalloweenTrains.com(tm)
FamilyGardenTrains.com(tm)
To view the Trains-N-TownsTM newsletter for August, 2013, click on the following link:
http://bigindoortrains.com/trains_n_towns/13_08_newsletter_indoor.htm
To read more, or to look at recommended Indoor or Garden Railroading products, you may click on the index pages below.
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New Halloween Projects for Indoor Trains and Towns
More Putz House News
Christmas Train Day, 2013
Collectible On30 Christmas Trains Getting Harder to Find