Thanks Andre for the Wonderful Memories
Your post rekindled many warm memories and an iPad splattered in tears. A decade younger than you, my first train set arrived via Santa around my 9th or 10th Christmas. I was allowed to open Santa's present on Christmas morning before breakfast.
I can still recall opening the bright paper (my Mom was a master!) and seeing a shiny new CN freight train. As if it were yesterday I remember running over to the stairs to announce to my Dad, who was just coming downstairs, "Dad, Santa brought me a trainset". It was much better than whatever I had wished for, as Santa's presents always were. Dad just seemed to know. I don't think the kid ever left him. He must have noticed my intense interest in the many Maroon and Gray locomotives that we saw on our vacation the summer before.
He took me to his factory over the Holidays and we (mostly him!) built a frame with 2 x 4's and covered it with plywood. We brought it home and stained the plywood and nailed down the track and I spent many happy hours driving that train. He mentioned that we'd have to paint that engine to match CP, but we never got around to it.
Not long after, he changed jobs due to a buy out of the company he had worked so hard to build, but didn't own*.
With a move to a house without a basement, the hobby got put on hold for a bit through that move, and not long after, another, to a small town where he went to run the new company's factory and take over marketing Still no basement, but he built me a 4 x 6 table on lighter framing that I could lever up on my Captain's bed which was just right for operating height.
That early pike got some turnouts and some small foam-core based mountains and tunnels, as well as a Bachmann 2-8-0 and a copy of "Scenery for Model Railroads" for a Birthday present . I often left it there at night and just slept in a sleeping bag on the floor. I still have all the cars and loco and power pack from that first trainset. At some point I attempted a brush on paint job of metallic gold to cover the CN paint on that F Unit (I have never really liked CN, and I really have no idea why!) . My intent was to cover the CN scheme and match a transport truck my Dad owned and create a fleet, but the result was rather ghastly It still awaits a date with the paint remover and my airbrush to get a proper paint treatment. Probably not really worth it, but hey, sentimental value.
Andre, your story brought back a flood of memories of my favourite Christmas, and my Dad who I lost in 2005. He kindled my interest in so many things, but notably model railroading and flying, both of which remain passions to this day. The company had gotten him an airplane to support his management of the company's factory stores and dealer network. My favourite Saturday's were those where he would wake me up and ask me if I wanted to go with him to some far off place to visit a dealer who was hosting a promotion.
Merry Christmas Dad, wherever you are, and to you Andre for sparking the warmth of the season, and to everyone else here. It really is "the most wonderful time of the year". Chilly and overcast in Vancouver today, but not raining. I'm told it's -38 at the farm today. Brrrrr.
Dad and my favourite airplane. I love my 182, but there is just something about the O10 (337) that defies comparison. If they didn't have spar and rear engine cooling issues, I'd have had one long ago. This one was turbocharged and quite happy on one engine at 20,000'.
*The payment to the owner came by way of escrowed stock and nothing else, and while the owner tried to look after the President and VPs with stock options, it couldn't work. Dad was offered stock as a reward for his servie and to try and retain him, but he could not take it due to the immediate Capital Gains taxes on stock in those days in Canada. Whatever the value was, he'd have had to come up with 50% of the value to take it. You had to pay the tax right away even though you couldn't sell the stock until it came out of escrow years later. A well known Vancouver philanthropist made his early millions in this manner, buying this and other high value companies for paper stock and then liquidating them for cash. And yet today everyone thinks the guy is a saint! He put thousands of Canadians out of work. My Dad saw what was coming and left. He had spent 10 years helping build the company and ended up with nothing out of the deal. They would not even sell him the C-337 he used to service his dealers. Not one to get mad, he just recruited everyone of those dealers to his new company, and left the old one in the dust. It closed not long after he left, putting 200 guys out of work. Sadly, he never flew much after that, not liking renting airplanes, but never being able to afford one of his own.
He got me flying though, many years later, and I did manage to get him up with my instructor and I when I was learning how to land. We lost him not long after that, and I finished my license for him more than anything. I always feel as if he's with me when I'm flying and I have my best chats with him then on the long lonely hours over the rocks.
