What 2020 has brought us to. Every year that we have been together we have run trains on Christmas Eve. We would invite anyone who chose to come by and watch the trains run and gather together for a little pre-Christmas cheer. The train garden would be decorated as well as the trains. We have several dedicated holiday trains that only get run once a year, plus we have ornaments for the ore cars and Christmas lights ’round passenger cars.
We are probably anomalies, but Archie and I actually like fruitcake. So we have some out for us and anyone else who cares for some, plus homemade cookies, cocoa and mulled apple cider. There’s a gas heater running so no one gets too terribly cold and the weather has never stopped the trains. We had one year that was a little drizzly, but it did not bother the trains any and the 1:1 people around the garden had a pop-up canopy to stay under.
And then…2020 came around. Both of us have been taking the restrictions seriously. We are not inviting a bunch of people to come and hang out with us and we are not baking a bunch of cookies for just the two of us. And if COVID issues were not enough, let us throw in some damaging winds, large hail and possibly a tornado. In reality, the social isolation made it easier to not try and force it, just to maintain our “record” of Christmas Eve celebrations. There will be more to come in the future, this year we will just sit back and relax.
We are still running trains though, this one happens to be T-gauge on my desk rather than our usual G Scale in the train garden. And we do have our cider and a properly aged fruitcake. Stay safe y’all and have a Merry Christmas!
Dismal Creek Railroad 