[AT] Old trains

[Dean Vinson]

Lately my interest in model trains has picked back up, after 30-some years
on the back burner.  I was browsing eBay a few months ago and happened upon
a nice HO scale model EMD F3 locomotive, cast metal, mid-1940s vintage,
honest and original looking but non-running and missing wheels and axles on
the front truck.  Wasn't going for much, so I bought it.  A few days later I
bought another old F3 with a running motor and good chassis for parts, to
make the first one complete.  It's flat beautiful.

But that wasn't actually my first model train purchase this year.  For a few
years now I'd been aware that one of the model train companies (Walthers)
had been making a really nice Great Northern Empire Builder set.  The
Walthers set went out of production early this year sometime, but I made
sure to buy one before they all disappeared from retailers.  Still in the
boxes, it's in my closet waiting for a time when I have space and time to
set up some tracks.

That was enough for a while, but then I noticed a similar set in Milwaukee
Road livery.  The Milwaukee Road, like the Empire Builder and local
commuters and the Elgin, Joliet & Eastern freights, looms large in my memory
of my maternal grandfather, with whom trainwatching was one of my growing-up
activities during visits to his Chicago-area suburban home.  The Milwaukee
Road set is in a box in my closet also.

That was enough for a while too, until I saw that F3 on eBay, and since then
I've acquired quite a few other model locomotives, freight cars, and
passenger cars.  Something about them feels right to me, in the same way
that an M Farmall or a Cockshutt 30 or an Oliver 77 or a John Deere A feels
right.  The mesh of function and optimism and honest production, the
elegantly simple and classic designs, the industrial streamlined designs of
Raymond Loewy and Henry Dreyfuss, the defining symbols of their industry
during the 40s and 50s.  My Farmall M makes me think of my dad, and his dad,
in the same way these toy F3s and E8s and such make me think of my mom's
dad.  Feels like a nice way to settle in for the winter.

Dean Vinson
Dayton, Ohio
www.vinsonfarm.net