Christmas and trains just seem to go together. As do trains and model villages. As a boy, Loren loved trains. His grandma Goodale loved Christmas villages.
“She liked Christmas, period. Her thing was ‘does Christmas only got to be a day a year?’,” says Loren Goodale III.
When she passed away in 1999 she had collected 40 or so village buildings. And as model railroader, your train needs a village and Loren got the idea. His train would run through a Christmas town in honor of grandma.
“A little bit of a tribute to grandma, I think she’d be pretty proud of what I got here now,” says Loren.
What he has now is 96 locomotives, about a thousand rail cars and over 500 village buildings. The lay out spans three different area’s: a city, a farming community and a sea side village. And the train runs through it all. There is a Christmas parade, scenes from Christmas vacation. Grayling’s Rialto Theater is also in the mix. You have to look close so you don’t miss anything.
“I if you look around you can find Charlie Brown and Lucy, snoopy. You can find Charlie’s house,” says Loren.
Loren says he doesn’t get out and run the trains as much as he likes, but there is always something to tinker with. He opens his village to the public twice a year to raise funds for the local food bank.
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