Christmas #32


Iron Horseman

Iron Horseman

Well-Known Member
Thirty two years ago I purchased three little 4-4-0s at a 90% off clearance sale at "Mile High Hobbies" in Downtown Denver. The Mountain Central unit was in a set with two passenger cars.

For 32 years it has been faithfully performing Christmas Tree duty for both singular trees and in the Christmas Forests. One year it was the power assigned to the package delivery train Christmas day. It started as DC, while its brother (D&RGW) was converted to PFM sound. When we started to expanding to multiple trees and multiple operators of the trains it got a DCC conversion in about 1995(?). The decoder is so old it is an original 2 digit channel with 14 speed steps.

Last year it was center stage around the largest tree in the Forest. Since there is no forest this year, it is assigned to my office's tree in the break room. The tree isn't much to look at but the little loco doesn't care. It just does its duty.
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I wonder how many real miles this train has accumulated?

PS. Sorry for the poor quality "phone" camera pictures.
 
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Good looking loco, and a great story!
All you need now is a tankcar with something to go with that coke!
 
bnsf971 said:
92,000 scale miles, based on 15smph for 8 hours a day, 6 days a week, 4 weeks per year, for 32 years.
Roughly 4000 real miles.
Click to expand...
Interesting. I'm thinking about 1/10th that because I'm guessing it was only 4 hours per day. In the early days it interfered with over the air TV reception so it got turned off a lot. That immediately takes it in half. Probably ran only an average of 3 days a week (Friday, Sat & Sun when people where home), so half again. The big variable is the 4 weeks. That varied greatly. At least twice the tree(s) wasn't even set up until Christmas Eve. Some times the tree was taken down on the 26th. Other years it was set up before Thanksgiving and left through New Years Day. I could probably figure that out looking at the Christmas pictures each year and cross referencing with old calendars. But then there were the years where it was on the track with two, three, or four other trains. It would be hard to identify how much actual "run" it got vs. the others in those situations.

Just went and watched it run. It appears to be running about 12.5smph (5' diameter circle in 17.8 seconds). So just in the office this year that is 7.5 hours x 4d = 30 hours x 12.5 smph = 375 sm. / 20.5 scale = 18.2 miles so far this year. It could have almost made the round trip from home to the office already. More than I imagined. Adds up quick.
 
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It is in a way like an oceangoing ship, that only goes 15 mph. But, it goes 15mph, 24 hours a day, until it gets where it's going.
 
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