ToyTrains1's Blog

… but not in the way that you might think! For my two Standard Gauge Christmas trains (pulled by the #10 electric locomotive and the #384 steam locomotive) I have a total of eight passenger cars (three coaches and an observation car for each set).  Well, I had a total of eight passenger cars — now there are nine!  This year, MTH brought out a matching baggage car.  Since all of the reindeer names have been used on the previous cars, this one is called "Santa".  It arrived yesterday, hence the name of this entry. It's a real beauty and here it is.  I'm told that there will be another next year (with a new name, of course) so that both sets will have a total of five cars each.

One of the first videos I ever shot showed the layout in action with the three main loops running.  I thought that I'd revisit that and show what I'm running today.  All three trains are made up of AtlasO reefers, about 150 in all.  On the outside track (O-72) are the MTH Premier GN Z-6 Challenger (4-6-6-4) , GN R-2 (2-8-8-2), and the GN S-2 Northern (4-8-4) running triple-headed.  On the middle (O-54) track is the MTH Premier PRR K4s Pacific (4-6-2) with a second K4s pushing.  On the inside track (O-42) is the MTH Premier PRR L1 Mikado (2-8-2) with the PRR B28 Six-Coupled (0-6-0) pushing.  That's a total of seven MTH Premier steamers running at the same time.  As you'll see, it gets quite smoked-up quite fast! The video is available in Real Media, Windows Media, and MPEG-4 high-quality high-resolution formats on the Multimedia page of my web site or as a lower-quality lower-resolution version on YouTube, ideal for dial-up users.