Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween

 

Happy Halloween

 

TRAIN TIME: 2023 Halloween Train Layout - Pt 3 Ruh-Roh! It's Scooby Doo

I have two Lionel Halloween-themed train sets. An earlier post highlighted the Lionel Set #2123060 Hallow's Eve Limited Graveyard Route from 2021 which was on the track for a week and a half or so. Then it was swapped out with Lionel Set #6-85241T Scooby-Doo The Mystery Machine Set from 2018. I have to say that of all my train sets, the Scooby Doo is among the favorites. It has a spooky bell and dialogue featuring the voice of Scooby and an assorted ghoul or two - a very fun set indeed! Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The set includes an engine, gondola with a ghost chasing Shaggy and Scooby, a boxcar, and a lighted caboose.

The large box has the track, the small one is just a filler piece.

TRAIN TIME: 2023 Halloween Train Layout - Pt 2 The Details

Over the years I've been buying figures, cars, and assorted details to add to the Halloween layout and most of them are shown here for the first time (although to be fair, I've posted them on my facebook groups). The cardboard buildings have all been posted here on the blog in past years and many of the individual detail pieces have also been blogged. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

I'm slowly getting more Harry Potter toys in so this corner has the new Lego Carriage pulled by Thestrals set.

One of my favorite Dept 56 pieces - imagine a near-sighted witch flying her broom into a tree! 😄

My pumpkin patch

The pumpkin patch farmer driving his tractor

This started life as a plastic Banner tractor from the 1950s. It was part of a set I bought but his head had had been broken off and lost by the seller. A small pumpkin bought off of fleaBay provided me a head to use and now the tractor is suitable for Halloween.

Those 'flats' are from a series of classic horror movie houses by PTF Designs and are equipped with LED lights

If there's something strange
In your neighborhood
Who you gonna call?
Ghostbusters!

If there's something weird
And it don't look good
Who you gonna call?
Ghostbusters!

TRAIN TIME: 2023 Halloween Train Layout - Pt 1

Halloween here on the blog has apparently been hit-or-miss over the years as evidenced by my spreadsheet entries. I featured a series of posts for my first ever Halloween-themed setup back in 2016. Prior to that Halloween had always been a day of Trick-or-Treating with the kids replete with costumes, candy, and fun, but nothing special as it relates to my hobbies. That all changed in 2016 when I got hit with the bug and started building kits from free downloads on the Web and placed them on the Halloween 'layout'. It wasn't much of a layout in 2016 as the only train set was this tiny wind up Scooby Doo set from Boley.

And then I got involved with my Edge-of-Town (EoT) micro-layout and there would be no trains running on the larger board from 2017-2019 and no Halloween set-ups on the EoT. 

By 2020 the larger train layout board had track on it and I was back to running trains on it again. I blogged Halloween set-ups in 2020 and 2021 BUT NOT 2022! And so I sit here scratching my head wondering why I didn't post anything last year!!?? That's just nutz!

Well hell. Okay fine. We're gonna rectify that this year. 

My Halloween set-ups for 2020, 2021, and 2022 were all done out in The Cave on the large layout board. In order to do a proper holiday display I had to move a lot of things out of the way and generally disrupt any progress made on building a permanent layout just so I could do these displays. That all changed last year when the Christmas layout was set up in the living room on a 4'x6' board I made just for it. This year, that board was in-place and ready to go early - just a few weeks back as a fatter-of-mact! It's what I used for the Pirate playset posts and it is now home to this year's Halloween Spooky Town. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

The Board

The board looks wonky because it is - at least it was when the photo was taken. It's straight now 😉

Playtime

But first!

Let's play pirates. Here's the Fort Treasure playset

Next came the Captain Blood and The Buccaneers playset

Spooky Town 2023

27 Sep: Finally getting around to placing track and pulling out the first train of the holiday season.

The First Train Set For The Holiday Season

Lionel Set #2123060 Hallow's Eve Limited Graveyard Route  LionChief (2021)

There are blinking lights on the sides of the boxcar which are best viewed when watching the video

Here the buildings are all in place as well as enough blue-colored foamcore to make a reasonable backdrop. The next post will show what Spooky Town looks like with all the figures, cars, accessories, etc.