Category Archives: Trains

July 17, 2025 · 11:52 pm

Updates in Downtown Toonerville

20170722_094000

Toonerville is really all about creating art with my HO model railroad toys.  So, here’s a picture of the newest arrangement of the downtown as it now sits in my bedroom/studio.

C360_2017-07-26-20-12-47-802

The buildings are a combination of models I put together and plaster buildings that I bought unpainted and then painted them.

C360_2017-07-26-20-13-53-809

The Ghost Busters van in front of Mike’s Farmer’s Market was recently bought for less than a dollar and added to collection.  Just in time too.  There is apparently a ghost in Mike’s clock tower.

The two Thomas the Tank Engine toys were recently added after they were recovered from a junk pile in the garage.

C360_2017-07-26-20-14-41-071

Here’s a shot of the Toonerville Trolley that was the first trolley added to my HO train layout back in the early 70’s.

C360_2017-07-26-20-13-15-877

So, this is a small bit of insight into the workings of a toy collector and artist with excessive amounts of hoarding disorder.  And I am sharing with you the most recent pictures I have made of the things in my collection.

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, humor, photo paffoonies, Toonerville, Trains

July 6, 2025 · 12:28 am

Spotted Trains

20150928_143708

I have had a practically life-long fascination with trains.  Where did that come from?  It came from a Methodist minister who once upon a time saved my life.

1383847_610320455678476_1290974342_n

Reverend Louis Aiken (in the cowboy hat) was a lover of HO model trains, as well as country music… and, of course, God.

My best friend growing up was a PK, a preacher’s kid.  And as we hung out and played games and got into imaginatively horrible trouble, we invariably wound up in the basement of the parsonage where his father kept his HO train layout.   I learned lessons of life in that basement in more than one way.  I have to explain all of that somewhere down line.  But for now, I have to limit the topic to what I learned about trains.  They are a link to our past.  They are everywhere. And they do far more for us than merely make us cuss while sitting and endlessly waiting at the railroad crossing.

20160720_192151

When visiting Dows, we absolutely had to stop and take pictures at the train station.

20160720_192327

This is, by my best guess, an SD40 locomotive parked at the restored train station in Dows, Iowa.

Spotting trains to take pictures of, gawk at, and totally make cow-eyes over has become a way of life to me.  When visiting Iowa, especially Mason City, Iowa, we always have to stop at the engine on display in East Park.

When I was a kid, this old iron horse was not fenced in to protect it from kids, weather, and other destructive forces.  Now, however, it is fully restored and given its own roof.  This is a 2-8-2 steam engine with two little wheels in front, eight big wheels in the middle, and two little wheels at the back (not counting wheels on the coal tender).  I have ridden on trains pulled by such a behemoth.  I love to watch the monkey gears grind on the sides of the wheels forcing steam power into the surge down the tracks.  And I can’t help being a total train nut.  Of course I don’t deny being more than one kind of nut.  But being a mixed nut is another post for another day.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

March 14, 2025 · 12:20 am

Return of the Train Man

C360_2017-03-18-20-05-50-954

I was an aficionado of HO model trains as a kid.  I continued that horrendous fixation with 1/78th scale worlds long into my extended juvenile immaturity (I was an unmarried teacher of middle school students until 1995.)    Even after I was married, my wife allowed me, to a very limited degree, to continue to be a train man.

c360_2017-01-15-18-04-28-900

I spent a good deal of time over the years building plastic model kits of buildings, painting and repainting plaster model buildings, and collecting engines, rolling stock, and trackside details.  Painting little 1/78th scale people is definitely an exercise for steady hands and a zen-like, highly focused mind.

But that all reached an impasse when we moved to the Dallas area.  I had to tear down my train layout, box up my trains, and put everything on hold until I had another place to build and create my HO model-train world.  So, while it was all boxed up and transported to first, a house that we rented from my brother-in-law, and then a house that we bought, it got shifted around and stacked inappropriately, and grandma put some really heavy items on top to crush and mangle my treasures.  It also spent a night outside in the rain when my brother-in-law’s water heater had to be replaced in the garage where everything was stored.  I was not a happy camper for a while.

Now, a decade later, I am still taking the tiny items and trying to glue the pieces back together.  I have basically given up trying to get the trains to run again.  But I can use the bits and pieces of Toonerville to make pictures like these.  It makes the art-parts of my psyche and soul a little happier.

C360_2017-03-18-20-06-11-205

Old number 99 had to have the front part where the headlamp is located reattached and restored.  It gave me something to do this weekend while I was down with a bad back and breathing difficulties.  It would be neat to put the train table back together and get things set up once again, but there is no space, and no unlimited funds, and less and less time.  So for now, the train man comes back to me to rebuild in photographs and in my imagination.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

Tagged as , , , , , , ,

July 3, 2024 · 12:57 am

Spotted Trains

20150928_143708

I have had a practically life-long fascination with trains.  Where did that come from?  It came from a Methodist minister who once upon a time saved my life.

1383847_610320455678476_1290974342_n

Reverend Louis Aiken (in the cowboy hat) was a lover of HO model trains, as well as country music… and, of course, God.

My best friend growing up was a PK, a preacher’s kid.  And as we hung out and played games and got into imaginatively horrible trouble, we invariably wound up in the basement of the parsonage where his father kept his HO train layout.   I learned lessons of life in that basement in more than one way.  I have to explain all of that somewhere down line.  But for now, I have to limit the topic to what I learned about trains.  They are a link to our past.  They are everywhere. And they do far more for us than merely make us cuss while sitting and endlessly waiting at the railroad crossing.

20160720_192151

When visiting Dows, we absolutely had to stop and take pictures at the train station.

20160720_192327

This is, by my best guess, an SD40 locomotive parked at the restored train station in Dows, Iowa.

Spotting trains to take pictures of, gawk at, and totally make cow-eyes over has become a way of life to me.  When visiting Iowa, especially Mason City, Iowa, we always have to stop at the engine on display in East Park.

When I was a kid, this old iron horse was not fenced in to protect it from kids, weather, and other destructive forces.  Now, however, it is fully restored and given its own roof.  This is a 2-8-2 steam engine with two little wheels in front, eight big wheels in the middle, and two little wheels at the back (not counting wheels on the coal tender).  I have ridden on trains pulled by such a behemoth.  I love to watch the monkey gears grind on the sides of the wheels forcing steam power into the surge down the tracks.  And I can’t help being a total train nut.  Of course I don’t deny being more than one kind of nut.  But being a mixed nut is another post for another day.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

Tagged as , , , , , , , , , ,

February 19, 2024 · 1:55 am

Toonerville Traffic

c360_2017-02-18-17-47-18-737

I had the good fortune recently to find some of my boxed-up HO train pieces that had been packed away since 2004 when we moved from South Texas to the Dallas area.  Now, in these photos I took of Toonerville, not all of it was part of the uncovered treasure.  But some of it most sincerely was.  The people out in front of Mike Minskey’s Tavern are from a set of unpainted 1/78th scale German townfolk from the 1880’s.  You see them posed here in front of the Batmobile parked in front of the Teapot Clockhouse.

c360_2017-02-14-13-59-52-710

Here you can see the two F-9 Diesels from the SuperChief (I have a thing for Sante Fe Railroad engines and rolling stock).  I parked them next to the Snowflake Express which you may have seen before, since I bought it in a garage sale after we moved here.

C360_2017-02-18-17-48-28-772.jpg

The multi-colored bus that you see behind the Miss Amy Wortle Boarding House is actually the Partridge Family tour bus from the TV show my sisters loved in the 1970’s.

c360_2017-02-18-17-48-44-663  Here’s a view of the front of that same TV bus as it sits between Miss Wortle’s place and Eggbert Egghead’s Egg House.  Dabney Egghead is the boy in the sailor suit showing off his brand new velocipede.

c360_2017-02-18-17-49-21-747

The old lady crossing in front of the Toonerville Trolley is Granny Wortle (who controls all the money in the family… I named a lot of the residents after people in Fontaine Fox’s comic strip of the 1930’s).

c360_2017-02-18-17-49-45-570

Here’s the back end of the trolley as it passes Digby Davies’ Pet Shop and the purple eggplant house where Gilbert Dornhoeffer and his seven vegetarian children live and build snowmen regularly.

c360_2017-02-18-17-50-35-119

On the other side of Eggbert Egghead’s Egg House you can see Butch and Marcia Niland’s VW mini-bus next to the old shoe-woman’s house which she built from a gigantic pink-and-white high-topped sneaker.  Digby  moved his velocipede, either to get it in the picture once again, or to get closer to the Scary Clown’s Ice Cream Truck while they’re still serving Eskimo Pies in midwinter.

So now you can plainly see that Mickey finding old boxes of toys that he thought were lost is not a good thing for Toonerville traffic in general, and definitely not good for Toonerville rush hour.

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, humor, illustrations, photo paffoonies, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Toonerville, Trains

Tagged as , , , ,

July 10, 2023 · 1:11 am

Updates in Downtown Toonerville

20170722_094000

Toonerville is really all about creating art with my HO model railroad toys.  So, here’s a picture of the newest arrangement of the downtown as it now sits in my bedroom/studio.

C360_2017-07-26-20-12-47-802

The buildings are a combination of models I put together and plaster buildings that I bought unpainted and then painted them.

C360_2017-07-26-20-13-53-809

The Ghost Busters van in front of Mike’s Farmer’s Market was recently bought for less than a dollar and added to collection.  Just in time too.  There is apparently a ghost in Mike’s clock tower.

The two Thomas the Tank Engine toys were recently added after they were recovered from a junk pile in the garage.

C360_2017-07-26-20-14-41-071

Here’s a shot of the Toonerville Trolley that was the first trolley added to my HO train layout back in the early 70’s.

C360_2017-07-26-20-13-15-877

So, this is a small bit of insight into the workings of a toy collector and artist with excessive amounts of hoarding disorder.  And I am sharing with you the most recent pictures I have made of the things in my collection.

 

 

Leave a comment

Filed under collecting, humor, photo paffoonies, Toonerville, Trains

July 6, 2023 · 2:28 am

Spotted Trains

20150928_143708

I have had a practically life-long fascination with trains.  Where did that come from?  It came from a Methodist minister who once upon a time saved my life.

1383847_610320455678476_1290974342_n

Reverend Louis Aiken (in the cowboy hat) was a lover of HO model trains, as well as country music… and, of course, God.

My best friend growing up was a PK, a preacher’s kid.  And as we hung out and played games and got into imaginatively horrible trouble, we invariably wound up in the basement of the parsonage where his father kept his HO train layout.   I learned lessons of life in that basement in more than one way.  I have to explain all of that somewhere down line.  But for now, I have to limit the topic to what I learned about trains.  They are a link to our past.  They are everywhere. And they do far more for us than merely make us cuss while sitting and endlessly waiting at the railroad crossing.

20160720_192151

When visiting Dows, we absolutely had to stop and take pictures at the train station.

20160720_192327

This is, by my best guess, an SD40 locomotive parked at the restored train station in Dows, Iowa.

Spotting trains to take pictures of, gawk at, and totally make cow-eyes over has become a way of life to me.  When visiting Iowa, especially Mason City, Iowa, we always have to stop at the engine on display in East Park.

When I was a kid, this old iron horse was not fenced in to protect it from kids, weather, and other destructive forces.  Now, however, it is fully restored and given its own roof.  This is a 2-8-2 steam engine with two little wheels in front, eight big wheels in the middle, and two little wheels at the back (not counting wheels on the coal tender).  I have ridden on trains pulled by such a behemoth.  I love to watch the monkey gears grind on the sides of the wheels forcing steam power into the surge down the tracks.  And I can’t help being a total train nut.  Of course I don’t deny being more than one kind of nut.  But being a mixed nut is another post for another day.

 

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

Tagged as , , , , , ,

March 10, 2023 · 2:46 am

Return of the Train Man

C360_2017-03-18-20-05-50-954

I was an aficionado of HO model trains as a kid.  I continued that horrendous fixation with 1/78th scale worlds long into my extended juvenile immaturity (I was an unmarried teacher of middle school students until 1995.)    Even after I was married, my wife allowed me, to a very limited degree, to continue to be a train man.

c360_2017-01-15-18-04-28-900

I spent a good deal of time over the years building building plastic model kits of buildings, painting and repainting plaster model buildings, and collecting engines, rolling stock, and trackside details.  Painting little 1/78th scale people is definitely an exercise for steady hands and a zen-like, highly focused mind.

But that all reached an impasse when we moved to the Dallas area.  I had to tear down my train layout, box up my trains, and put everything on hold until I had another place to build and create my HO model-train world.  So, while it was all boxed up and transported to first, a house that we rented from my brother-in-law, and then a house that we bought, it got shifted around and stacked inappropriately, and grandma put some really heavy items on top to crush and mangle my treasures.  It also spent a night outside in the rain when my brother-in-law’s water heater had to be replaced in the garage where everything was stored.  I was not a happy camper for a while.

Now, a decade later, I am still taking the tiny items and trying to glue the pieces back together.  I have basically given up trying to get the trains to run again.  But I can use the bits and pieces of Toonerville to make pictures like these.  It makes the art-parts of my psyche and soul a little happier.

C360_2017-03-18-20-06-11-205

Old number 99 had to have the front part where the headlamp is located reattached and restored.  It gave me something to do this weekend while I was down with a bad back and breathing difficulties.  It would be neat to put the train table back together and get things set up once again, but there is no space, and no unlimited funds, and less and less time.  So for now, the train man comes back to me to rebuild in photographs and in my imagination.

3 Comments

Filed under artwork, autobiography, humor, photo paffoonies, Trains

Tagged as , , , ,

February 17, 2022 · 1:48 pm

Toonerville Traffic

c360_2017-02-18-17-47-18-737

I had the good fortune recently to find some of my boxed-up HO train pieces that had been packed away since 2004 when we moved from South Texas to the Dallas area.  Now, in these photos I took of Toonerville, not all of it was part of the uncovered treasure.  But some of it most sincerely was.  The people out in front of Mike Minskey’s Tavern are from a set of unpainted 1/78th scale German townfolk from the 1880’s.  You see them posed here in front of the Batmobile parked in front of the Teapot Clockhouse.

c360_2017-02-14-13-59-52-710

Here you can see the two F-9 Diesels from the SuperChief (I have a thing for Sante Fe Railroad engines and rolling stock).  I parked them next to the Snowflake Express which you may have seen before, since I bought it in a garage sale after we moved here.

C360_2017-02-18-17-48-28-772.jpg

The multi-colored bus that you see behind the Miss Amy Wortle Boarding House is actually the Partridge Family tour bus from the TV show my sisters loved in the 1970’s.

c360_2017-02-18-17-48-44-663  Here’s a view of the front of that same TV bus as it sits between Miss Wortle’s place and Eggbert Egghead’s Egg House.  Dabney Egghead is the boy in the sailor suit showing off his brand new velocipede.

c360_2017-02-18-17-49-21-747

The old lady crossing in front of the Toonerville Trolley is Granny Wortle (who controls all the money in the family… I named a lot of the residents after people in Fontaine Fox’s comic strip of the 1930’s).

c360_2017-02-18-17-49-45-570

Here’s the back end of the trolley as it passes Digby Davies’ Pet Shop and the purple eggplant house where Gilbert Dornhoeffer and his seven vegetarian children live and build snowmen regularly.

c360_2017-02-18-17-50-35-119

On the other side of Eggbert Egghead’s Egg House you can see Butch and Marcia Niland’s VW mini-bus next to the old shoe-woman’s house which she built from a gigantic pink-and-white high-topped sneaker.  Digby  moved his velocipede, either to get it in the picture once again, or to get closer to the Scary Clown’s Ice Cream Truck while they’re still serving Eskimo Pies in midwinter.

So now you can plainly see that Mickey finding old boxes of toys that he thought were lost is not a good thing for Toonerville traffic in general, and definitely not good for Toonerville rush hour.

Leave a comment

Filed under autobiography, humor, illustrations, photo paffoonies, strange and wonderful ideas about life, Toonerville, Trains

May 8, 2021 · 2:57 pm

The Art of Miniatures by Mickey

The Princess on her balcony.

These images were created by me by doing a number of things I learned to do as a kid who loved model trains. Some of the buildings are made from HO railroad model kits. Some are knickknacks found at Goodwill and repaired or repainted or altered by me. Most of the people are plastic and lead figures bought unpainted and painted by me. All of it is put together by me, and it tends to take over the house to the point it makes my wife complain.

s.

Leave a comment

Filed under artwork, homely art, photo paffoonies, toystore quests, Trains

Tagged as