Dept 56 #48369 Rickety Railroad Station (2008)

Okay, well maybe Halloween is over but I still have some odds-&-ends to post. This was meant to be posted last year, but for reasons I can't fathom, Halloween came and went, I took photos and Y'allTube videos, but nothing got posted here on the blog! All I can say is, it's not easy being me! 😕 As a general rule, I prefer not to use ceramic or porcelain buildings for the Halloween displays - storing them takes too much space out in The Cave - but the layout was screaming (pun intended) for a train station and there were no suitable Halloween-themed paper or cardstock stations for me to build. This Dept. 56 Rickety Railroad Station fit the bill nicely as it had lots of character, flickering lights, and sound. The sound set consists of a ghostly train sequence at the station along with ghostly station announcements, and then the train departing and rolling down the track. If there's any detractor, it's the fact that the sounds are fairly loud with no volume control. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

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.

Just For Fun

Just another vignette on the Halloween layout done with the train buffs in mind!

 

This Year's Haunted Village (aka Spooky Town) Halloween Set-up - Pt 3

As usually happens with these holiday set-ups, I'll take a few things out to get started, then run trains and take photos, then take some more stuff out, and so-on and so-forth. The BIG news this year is the addition of Lionel's Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine ready-to-run set from 2018. This is an awesome toy and a must-have for the Scooby-Doo fan. It's part of Lionel's LionChief series of sets and designed to be operated from either the included bluetooth hand-held controller or Lionel's LionChief app on your mobile device. There are station announcements and crew talk in Scooby's voice and a monster's voice, and a standard horn sound. However, the bell sound is quite different: rather than the usual train engine bell, it's a recording of a haunting cathedral bell of the type you may hear in Scooby-Doo cartoons! hahahaha Also too, since the last post we have some more vignettes added to the overall scene and all those diminutive 1/64 scale cars were replaced with larger vehicles. The figures are bit all-over-the-place scale-wise but I'm okay with that - they're all there to have fun. Enjoy! Opa Fritz

Lionel No. 6-85241T Scooby-Doo The Mystery Machine Set

The set comes with an engine, operating Shaggy and Scooby chase gondola, boxcar, and caboose

I did two 'unboxing" videos of this set.

A few vignettes

"Good morning!"

"Tourists! tsk tsk tsk Somebody tell these people the big kid is harmless"

"Family picture day in Spooky Town"

The hearse and Munsters Koach are new to this year's layout. I'll post photo essays on tem another time

2020 The Phoenix Mint No. 18370 '37 Studebaker Hearse 8

2021 Dept 56 #6007411 The Munsters Koach

Ecto-1 and The Mystery Machine were featured in previous year's past

Jada 1-43 Ghostbusters Ecto-1

Jada Scooby-Doo Mystery Machine

So my grand daughter says, "Opa, can I look at the Halloween layout?"

"Sure!" LOL

She played a little, watched the Scooby train and placed a couple of souvenir spiders from the Excalibur Hotel and Casino, and generally reorganised afew things hahahahaha

Started This Year's Haunted Village (aka Spooky Town) Halloween Set-up - Pt 1

This week I started pulling out my Halloween stuff for this year's Spooky Town display. All regular work on my Milwaukee North Western layout will be on hold until after the season. Here are the first pics o taken after the initial set-up and it's a sure thing this will likely change in the days to come. Enjoy! Opa Fritz