Here's a few shots of our 2022 Christmas village, a combination of home-made, purchased, and contributed cardboard houses, a home-made mountain/tunnel/tree-stand, and prewar clockwork/mechanical O-gauge toy trains:











Lots of thanks to Howard Lamey for his mentoring and contributed buildings. Fun project to end the year on.

We took some friends of ours up to Glen Rock, Pa., this past Christmas to see the train gardens. The guys at the VFD do a great job every year:



Back in the day, they had a big S-gauge display, but sadly that's been replaced by this O-27 style layout (a very nice one at that). The kids sure get a charge out of it.

Christmas garden at Kenilworth, December 2022:



One of the best annual gardens in and around Baltimore; always draws a crowd.

The Kenilworth garden has evolved considerably over the last ten years or so. A few years back, when the place changed ownership/management, the "real estate" offered to the local club was significantly reduced and the display was much smaller. Attendance was noticeably diminished, and I believe management realized that the amount of seasonal holiday traffic went with it. These last 2-3 years, the display has been expanded, perhaps close to the square-footage it had before (although not smack in the middle as before). It seems the traffic is back.

I guess window displays technically aren't holiday villages, per se, but they sure evoke memories. It's getting to be that time of year:



Looks like a prewar American Flyer Hyde Park station and American Flyer's stamped-tin Zephyr, so I'm guessing 1930's vintage.

Saw this pic out on the web and thought, wow, that's Christmas! It's not rare, but somewhat unusual to see Flyer S-gauge under the tree:



A quirky train headed by a pair of the late-production Flyer F-units, a model I always thought looked a bit out of proportion compared to the offerings of Lionel and others. Nice little grade-crossing signal/bell accessory and lots of Plasticville...pretty vintage stuff likely from the late 1950s and early 1960s.

An update - the Christmas garden at Kenilworth, 2023:



Another terrific effort.

We set up a few ceramic buildings and a loop of 42-inch diameter O-27 track under the tree this year (2023), replacing the boring tree skirt we typically use with the artificial tree. Here the baby Stephen Girard set eases into the station a couple days before Christmas:



Hope everyone here has a great Christmas and a good 2024!