A few weeks ago we were talking to Steve's mother. She said, "We've sent you something we're really excited about. It'll be there on Thursday." She refused to tell us any more, so we had to wait.
Four days later, I ran some errands. After I parked in the garage, I opened the little door to go in the house, but my way was blocked by two really big boxes.
They were way too heavy for me to move. Fortunately I could get out of the garage through the big door and close it using the keypad. I really liked that the box marked "Fragile" was underneath the big, heavy one. Luckily nothing was crushed.
Once Steve came home, he lugged the boxes inside and opened the first one. Right away we saw very old track. He knew instantly that it was from a Lionel set and a very old one at that. He unpacked more and found that along with a lot of rusted track there were a number of train cars, a few engines, and a few other items.
A call to Steve's parents cleared up the mystery. They belonged to their friend and had since the mid-1940's. He no longer wanted them and thought Steve might have a use for them. If not, he was perfectly fine if Steve did whatever he wanted with them. Steve took a bunch of things into work to talk with the Classic Toy Trains folks. They said that if there were any pictures of the original owner playing with the trains as a child, they could make an article out of it. Unfortunately, no pictures were found, so there won't be an article. That's too bad.
Here are a few pictures of the cars and other equipment:
Steve set up a little "museum piece" for his window ledge at work:
None of the track can be used - it's too old and rusted. Instead of trashing it, I would like to make some sort of art piece with it that we could hang outside. There are a bunch of curved pieces, so I should be able to design something interesting. Steve will have to help with assembly, of course, because I'm pretty scared of the soldering iron.
A gift like this deserves an appropriate thank you card, don't you think?
As the wife of a train buff, I have acquired some train stamps. They're useful for scrapbook pages and birthday cards for Steve, and they were perfect for this project.
Steve ripped a piece of paper and started stamping the train:
At this point I left him alone to work without camera flashes.
Here's the finished card:
I always find it interesting when Steve makes a card. I would have only stamped the train in a straight line, but he stamped it as if it was going around a track. It's so cute! The "Thanks" was from a stamp with a bunch of "stuff" around the word. He used a pen to ink the "Thanks" only. He got the idea to put it in the smoke from the frilly bits of the stamp he didn't use.
On the inside of the card, he used a stamp I bought him a few months ago that I found on Etsy:
The recipient loves cats, so this stamp is perfect for him, too.
No comments:
Post a Comment