Brass boxcar locks w/ original keys, switch keys, misc. small railroad items, a wall-mount key hanger made with old RR building siding and tie-date nails and a gift certificate to the Colorado rAilroad Supply, aka "Toys For Boys". A VERY good Christmas!

Sounds great!

I got a new DCC command station - a Digitrax Zephyr that replaced the old failing MRC Prodigy. Felt really good to be able to switch directions and go forward without having to turn the command station off and on to reset directions :-)

And from my brother and sister in law, a nice wall clock that looks like a railroad station wall clock - mounts perpendicular to the wall so it can be seen while looking down along the wall.

But my main gift was celebrating with my wife, our two kids, my brother, his wife and two kids, my sister and my dad.

Smile,
Stein

So far clothes, candy, and LA Noire and Portal 2 for the 360. Also got McDonnell's Wheat Kings and Porterfield's Dining by Rail.

I got coal. Which for model railroader...Isnt a bad thing.

I got some TTX Fbox high cube box cars from Exact Rail. The postman delivered three hours prior to gift giving. Perfect timing

ps. Gift giving is in Germany on 12/24 evening.

A Pentrex NY Central Collection DVD of three documentary films regarding the railroad. Some great vintage footage through the decades!
Ralph

Two Alco RS-11's in Atlas Nscale. One wearing the Southern black tuxedo scheme, and the other the white billboard letters of N&W.

From my family (mother, father, sister and her husband, youngest niece and her husband, nephew) I got two pairs of relax fit jeans, pack of underwear, pack of T-shirts, two sweat shirts with hoods, a Christmas tree shaped candy jar full of chocolate candies (good to have around when my blood sugar crashes), a bronze cane to replace the Rosewood one I've been using for thirty years, a portable massage machine, a Gillette men's face and body collection (too bad there wasn't a new body in it. I could really use that), a box of European shortbread cookies, two Wal-Mart gift cards (Wal-mart gift card for $26, Visa gift card for $50). For myself I got two bags of flawed castings from Stoney Mountain Classic, an Aurora HO Scale Mystery Machine (Scooby Doo). I've yet to send off a money order for two Varney F3B dummy locos.

Herc Driver Wrote:One wearing the Southern black tuxedo scheme

And the Carolina & Northwestern at that!

Well, I got a fresh undecorated E8A locomotive (HO),

A TCS decoder,

The DVD "Bye Bye Blues: A Look at SEPTA's Regional Rail System,"

The book "Pennsy Electric Years Volume 3",

Battlefield 3 (for the Xbox owners out there),

and finally, a brand new laptop and carrying case!

That last one sure is more useful than I anticipated!

Not fully sure. My wife and I have been buying things "that'll be our Christmas gift to us" which includes an LGB Teddy Roosevelt souvenir car with 2 bears; the Grizzly Flats station, a signal bridge. A friend gave me 2 OO wagons. SIL gave me a set of lights that sort of look like a train and a sleeve of chocolate bars with an early train depicted -- spread over 4 bars which may never get eaten. Plus the annotated Wind in the Willows and a combo clock-calculator.

No train stuff, however there was,
A great Christmas breakfast at my youngest daughter's home, and time with her "in-laws", my son-in-law, and my 7month old grandson.
A great Christmas dinner at my oldest daughter's home, a "mini piano concert" from my 7 year old granddaughter, and a"mini clarinet concert" from my 10 year old granddaughter, and time with my son-in-law and his family.
A video chat with my daughter in Pittsburgh,
and, from my daughter in Arizona, up to date photos of my 2 month old twin grandsons.
Yup !, it was a "Good Day"

got a few things from Micro-Mark. and some choo-choo related videos.

A White Christmas for Melbourne in Summer

Merry Christmas Day from Melbourne's Weather.
Melbourne had a storm cell sweep across my part of the city, with damaging hail, ranging in size from small marbles to billiard balls in size, followed by heavy downpours of rain, resulting in flash flooding, ceilings collapsing, roads flooding, cars damaged by hail, lightning and thunder. Suburbs not far from me got 92mm [almost 4 inches] of rain and 76mm [3 inches] of rain in about an hour, the city only registered 35mm [1 1/2 inches].

I escaped the worst of the damage with only wet carpet in part of the lounge from the gutters overflowing 3 or 4 times and the water flowing back in to the house via the eaves lining and down through the window frame. A bit of work with fans, a dehumidifier and towels and things are ok. I guess it also shows just how much experience with flooding and rain soaked carpets at work that I didnt panic or complain, I just started the clean up.
Compared to how others have been hit, I got off lightly. I have also been cleaning out the gutters and doing 'commando gardening' choping down over grown trees and bushes.
Oh, and Santa brought me a portable gasless mig welder, a portable welding table and my son got me a book on welding. How did he know?
Mark

A San Juan Car Co D&RGW boxcar. Eleven D&RGW boxcars, 4000 series I believe, went to Pearl Harbor during WW2 along with 76 ex-C&S cars (Miller cars used by the RGS). I'll modify some of the details on the D&RGW boxcar and team it with a C&S boxcar I'm scratchbuilding to be my first Hawaiian boxcars.

I received a large quantity of couplers: Coronado's DSP&P Link & Pin Couplers and Grandt Line's Tower couplers. There were also several packets of brake wheels and some Kadee On30 wheelsets which I'll put on new, longer axles for On3.

My little boy made out like a bandit. In addition to train toys, he received an OO scale mogul (James the Red Engine) with some freight cars and a "Big Percy"...one of Bachmann's G scale Thomas train sets.

My wife got me some Proto:87 spikes to experiment with, along with some 7' long On3 ties and PC board ties. Since the shortest ties used by the Oahu Railway after 1920 were 7' long, Fast Tracks or custom ties are my only options to build accurate track (SJCC's flex track has 6' ties and tie plates...so I'll only use it for hidden track)

We were hoping to sell our house, but it is still on the market...and the new layout remains at least a few months in the future.

Michael