Mm-hmm, Toonerville is a town I founded and built. I know that sounds strange, but I can explain. It used to be my HO model train layout. It used to be, when I owned a house in Cotulla, Texas, I had room for a four by twelve sheet of plywood on which to lay track, wire it up, build scenery, and run my model trains (and two different versions of the Toonerville Trolley).
Toonerville is named after Fontaine Fox’s Toonerville Folks comic strip that appeared in newspapers from 1915 until the 1950’s. A book of Fox’s collected Toonerville cartoons became my most prized possession during my college days, the second half of the 1970’s. More than just a favorite book, it became my religion, my Bible, influencing not only my art style and my cartoon stories, but my very perception of small town life, the only life I knew from 1956 to 1975.
When we moved from South Texas to the Dallas area in 2004, my city of Toonerville had to be torn down, boxed up, and transported. Sadly, it never got set up as an HO train layout again. Now it is relegated to the tops of three bookcases. In addition to train engines that mostly still run (though I am guessing, not basing that on experiment), it includes model houses and city buildings that I put together myself and painted, plaster buildings that I have painted, and other nick-knack-shelf buildings of approximately the right size that I have re-painted (including re-painted Christmas, Easter, and Halloween ornaments, plus one house-shaped candle that my sister-in-law gave me). Oh, yes, you can plainly see the portions of my Pez dispenser collection that sit grumpily amid the streets of Toonerville.
Catch a Falling Star 