Atlas Trainkids

Fri 5/08/2020. The model railroaders have this sub-hobby where they entice their miniature relatives with “EZ” train “sets”, suitable for laying about the Christmas tree to inveigle the little creatures into the Magical Wurld of Trainz. This ~$100 Atlas offering provides plastic track and a battery-powered gadget, at HO scale, and indeed when I bought it some real HO track, it worked better.

And I will note that “Christmas” has been assiduously suppressed by model train magazines, led by the esteemed industry champ Model Railroader — they didn’t want to offend all those muslim HO fans. ... They’ve actually eased-off in recent years, no doubt something to do with decay & decline, but the idea that they ever indulged in such chicanery is astonishing, since model trains and Christmas are obviously an important focal-point for senseless expenditure.

But the model trains, like so many boomer-now-geezer preoccupations, have always been a friend to Holy Socialism and all its works, and indeed this particular train is an amazing exemplar of the nationalized railways: the Amtrak Acela express, connecting the northeast power centers between Boston and the holy Washington D.C., providing “upscale amenities and polished professional service at speeds up to 150 mph” which I suspect means something like, “stops frequently in the middle of nowhere for hours for no conceivable reason” but perhaps that is just unsubstantiated obloquy which, if true, will never be reported in our totally unbiased and non-partisan news media. ... And their web page picture looks considerably snazzier than my little plastic train....

So the little children will be raised-up to desire a ride on the Acela super-express before all things, which is right and proper. Although unlikely. ... I will continue to prize my adorable toy monument to wildly-successful socialism, and toot its little horn from time to time, or run it on its upgraded track section, on which I placed genuine E-Z Trak(R) Wheel Stops, so it will not wander off into my jungles of junk.

Why anybody else would buy it is not so clear — most don’t have my conscientious appreciation of Great American Boondoggles. ... With which, in its own sphere, model railroading is rife:

• All model railroad hobbyists are supposed to be thrilled by “operating sessions”, where a bunch of them congregate at some large layout, and operate the trains just like a real railroad. ... Not like the Addams train wrecks which, I gather, require only one operator.

• All the guys are supposed to love the expensive computerized DCC systems, the better to stage realistic operating sessions.

• Trains with remote controls and batteries, like my toy Acela but fancier, occasionally show-up as competition to DCC technology, but are scorned, seemingly honoring the opulent camera industry’s DSLR slogan: “Works Worse ... Costs More!™”

So everything’s good....

& Even Better

In the idle hours and years as a 37th covid variant rages across the nation in search of a permanent democrat congress, I upped my game and got a giant Lionel flyer steam engine — battery-powered plastic junk of course, and I don’t bother with the train’s cars but run the engine back & forth just like my wretched acela. And the plastic steam engine is really good-looking compared to the wretched acela and has comparable effects, just louder, and the talkie part is a dispatcher supposedly giving the steam engine the go-ahead and doesn’t sound nearly as nancy as the acela’s pitiful screechy “all-aboard” yelp — although maybe that does sound like an actual acela PA and/or it’s supposed to be amusing, i.e. for the miniature forms — but then again there probably wasn’t much radio dispatching back there in the age of steam....

Darkness

Tue 11/1/22 9:53 am. And then the final battle — glow-in-the-dark trainkids! ...