My holiday highlight was the day after Thanksgiving , when my parents took me, an only child (I led a sheltered life), to the BIG THREE (use to be Big Four) Pittsburgh department stores for "shopping". Of course I gravitated to those wonderful Lionel train displays in toy-land (heck with football, chemistry sets, Erector sets, model plane kits). Whether static or running, Lionel or American Flyer mesmerized me with dreams of large layouts with all those wonderful clanking, clicking, buzzing, bubbling accessories, complete with engine smoke smells. First stop was Kaufman's as they seem to really be into trains, then Gimbels, finally the so-so Joseph Hornes, as I recall the ordering 55+ years ago. The fourth store, Boggs and Buhl had some trains but the store burnt to the ground spectacularly one summer. Then to complete the day, it off was the Buhl Planetarium HUGE (to my eyes) train layout with all scale animation and trains running round and round everywhere.
Ah the good or days, or was it, with red menace, McCarthyism, duck and cover, and other things our parents tried to shield our tender childhoods from? 
Any other nostalgic recalls of you two and three rail runners?
