Here comes Advent - Week Two

This second Sunday in Advent brings with it a somewhat eclectic post, covering, as it does, trains, extraordinary enthusiasm for a hobby, and, as befits Christmas, a little music.

Trains and Christmas have always seemed to me to go together somehow - travelling home for the holidays, riding through a snowy landscape, perhaps getting stranded - or even murdered.   A scenario used in more than one novel, not only in the iconic Murder on the Orient Express (which as the fabulous children's magazine Look and Learn records is based on a real life incident with the train) but also in J. Jefferson Farjeon's Mystery in White, something very readable to add to your Christmas reading list. 

Small houses with candles inside have always delighted me and we have several around the room at Christmas.   Tiny villages too have their attractions as may be seen at the end of a previous Yuletide post. 

But I have so far managed to resist the temptations of the boxed, lit villages that appear around Christmas time.   Well, I thought I had, until I was scrabbling around in the loft in my house in Bavorov earlier this year and found, to my amazement, precisely one of those village sets, albeit a very small one.   I then remembered that they had been on offer in the Penny supermarket at some point and I had succumbed.....

It seemed a shame to leave it there, neatly packed in its box.  I shall not unpack it in front of a video camera however - I have spent some of this evening watching in jaw-dropping amazement the extraordinary phenomenon of Unboxing Videos, a concept previously completely unknown and still incomprehensible to me - since in any case I handed the task of setting it up for Small Worlds to the ever-helpful Jana..... 

The plan was to put the village and the clockwork train I happened to have to hand, onto a board in the Stables and leave it for another Jana to move it into Small Worlds in time for the Christmas Market on 10th December.   But sadly we had no boards available that were big enough for the train to run round the houses so we had to compromise with a stationary train.  A train bound for nowhere.....

An unholy tangle..... 

Well, at least the wires are straight now.....

Happy Christmas!

Now to be honest, I was quite happy with our little effort  until I started exploring YouTube for videos of Christmas railway layouts.   Not only are there hundreds of these, of huge and mind-blowing complexity, but there are even more Christmas villages, set up by people in their living rooms for the Christmas season....I had no idea!

And when I came across this one I could only sit back and marvel in awe at the lengths to which people will go in their enthusiasm for their hobby.   Or am I a pot calling the kettle black perhaps?

I shall be back with further Advent cheer next Sunday but in the meantime I leave you with what was actually the reason for a train-related post - one of my favourite songs. To my utter delight I have not only found it in the original film version, enhanced to stereo, but also complete with Christmas decorations! Enjoy.....