Vintage Christmas Photographs

Yup, but there's a tinge of melancholy sometimes as well. The song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" guts me every time I hear it.

But no matter, here's a happy kid and his dad (Secretary of War Harry Woodring), December 24, 1937, a new Marx M-10005 clockwork under the tree:



And a monster of a tree, for sure (looks like a cedar). This was around the same time The Old Man was pining for an American Flyer Zephyr set. He received a Hoge 900 set from my grandparents instead, a set that cost quite a bit less than the Flyer. His desire for a Flyer Zephyr stuck with him though, and 50 years later he found a Western Coil set made during the same period, but sold by the Consoli family after they acquired WC's last bit of inventory.

His train sat in storage for the two decades since he passed, but a couple years ago we decided to bust it out and return it to its place under the tree:



That Christmas it was the 1930s once again. The train, which belongs to my daughter now, ran like a clock. I'm sure he had a good chuckle, wherever he is, lol.

First photo courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Welllllll....based on the visual evidence provided it would appear the nearly invisible train in the 1921 Christmas photo would have to be an American Flyer.  The semaphores are definitely Flyer with the two color masts.  In addition, the car laying on its side appears to have elements of Flyer baggage car lithography from the period - note the distribution of the litho pattern on either side of the baggage car door compared to the example below (ignore the door color differences)

I love all the vintage pictures. Thanks for sharing.

Thanks for doing that, af; much clearer detail shot and I would totally agree, definitely Flyer. Still no idea on that "Pullman"? A pull-toy, I would think, given the wheel-sets. Looks like Junior has already bunged up one end. Given that there appears to be a tender laying behind him on the right, I'd tend to think there's a locomotive somewhere, just out of view.

I could download these as tif files from LOC and edit them, but then I'd have to store them. I'm starting to get down toward the end of my "free" Flickr allotment, so I'm a bit stingy in saving much, lol.

Here's one more from the LOC's digital archives, Christmas 1922:


The Reisser family Christmas tree (looks like another Balsam), with bits of an Ives wind-up set strewn about (actual date of the photo is December 29, 2022, so maybe kid is already losing interest). Tinsel and candles on the tree?

Yup, Bill’s got a bunch of nice shots...there’s so many out there. I’m trying not to double up. Was hoping for more member shots.

The trifecta: O-gauge, S-gauge, and HO, all under an aluminum Christmas tree:



Lots of Plasticville, a few putz houses, a diecast Edsel, and more "brick" skirting. Perhaps not "vintage", but it's got many of the elements that make it great.