Kenn's ATC Christmas Train

For many years, my wife Martha had expressed a wish that we had a Christmas train. Nothing fancy like a full-fledged "layout", just a loop of track and a train, maybe some holiday-themed cars, to go around the tree or on the sideboard.

Last Christmas (2001), with the help of both my daughters and my son, I constructed just such a train in N scale. (I'll put a link to it here later.)

So this Christmas (2002), with the help of several people from www.nervousness.org, she returned the favour. Sometime around Thanksgiving (I presume), Martha posted a request on Nervousness to create a "Land-Mail Art Object" (LMAO) by sending her "Artist Trading Cards" (ATCs) The original post called for "1-3 ATCs [per person] of Christmas-themed train cars". Contributions were received from (in alphabetical order): autumnsunflower, g3d, Mary, Mejaka, mrswas, and pengrafyx. The locomotive was drawn by Will H, my son's friend and former roommate. zLaNa is still working on one or more additional cars at this time. (Not all ATCs that were received made it into the train shown in the photo below, due to a temporary lack of card sleeves.)

The resulting train is shown in the picture below.

Click on a card in the train to see a full-size image of that card.
Or view the cards using a page of thumbnails.
Click on a face to see who's who.

locomotive Nativity Car candles and greens R+ER:  Ravenglass + Eskdale Railway Ho Ho Ho one elf beer and pretzels Eggnog Tanker toys + goodies two elves quilts CPR:  Canadian Pacific Railway Handel's Messiah snowman U.S.A. Rail Sesame Street RH&DR:  Romney, Hythe, + Dymchurch Railway Caboose Kenn Elaine Abby

Kenn: The happy recipient (Martha's husband)

Elaine: Martha's sister (no web site yet)

Abby: Kenn and Martha's oldest daughter