Whistle and Steam

 

Whistle and Steam

Noel Laflin

12-17-22

One of my greatest childhood memories leading up to Christmas was when my father would head to the garage and bring the model train tracks tacked to the two large sheets of plywood out of the rafters, connect the two boards together, thoroughly rub the tracks with steel wool, take the engine and cars from the old wooden tool box that sat at the end of my brother's bed, hook up the transformer control, place engine and cars in place, and finally flip the switch.

That's a fine memory.

I was curious what that old Lionel set might have cost my folks and found this advertisement from a 1952 Sears catalog and see the very same train set that we once had.

It was the 6-unit Freight with smoke, whistle, which sold for $49.95. I remember those tiny white pellets we would place in the locomotive's smoke stack and wait for the steam to rise as it whistled round and round.

That $49.95 was two thirds of a mortgage payment back then.

My dad was pretty conservative with funds throughout his life, and rightly so, having just scraped by during the Great Depression, but he plunked down the cash for this train set, claiming it was for the family's entertainment.

But the way in which he lovingly went through the ritual of setting it all up each year and ran that train round the Christmas tree makes me think that the boy in him was truly the one being most entertained.