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Trains and Christmas Go Together

Posted on: Tuesday, 20 December 2005, 12:00 CST

By Terry Smith, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho,, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho,

Dec. 20--TWIN FALLS -- Electric trains and Christmas seem to go together, at least at Jack and Sylvia Pretti's home, where locomotives and trolleys pull passenger cars through snow-covered villages underneath a Christmas tree.

For Jack Pretti, Christmas is a good excuse to set up the trains and accessories he's been collecting the past 15 years.

"I hate to see something boxed up like this all the time," he said.

So get the trains out he does, as two of them run side by side on a makeshift layout that measures about 6 feet by 15 feet.

"He'd like to put it all over the house, but he doesn't have time, and we'd have to step over it all the time," said his wife.

Pretti likes to build big. His trains are G scale made by LGB in Germany. He explains that G scale is 1:22, much larger than the more common 1:43 Lionel trains or 1:87 HO sets.

His wife gently teases Jack about his hobby, but readily admits she's the one who got him started with LGB.

"I saw these at a store in Salt Lake and I thought, 'He'd just die if he had these'," she said. "So I got him this, and now he's got 40 or 50 pieces."

Pretti explained that he's always been a train buff. Part of it comes from his father, who was a rail mailman back when trains regularly hauled mail. He's also owned some of the smaller-scale sets, but is now addicted to the larger ones.

For the Christmas setup, he has two trains running simultaneously. They loop around the Christmas tree and pass through miniature villages complete with snow-covered buildings, trees and people. He prefers earlier period trains and accessories, which look to be modeled from the late 19th century.

Pretti said the trains provide "good therapy" and help him relax.

"He just comes in and watches it go round and round," Sylvia Pretti said. "I don't know what he's thinking."

She admits she likes the trains too. "I wouldn't want it up all the time, but I like it because he likes it, and the kids like it. For me, it's just the enjoyment that he gets from it. The little grandchildren when they come at Christmas, they just love it."

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Copyright (c) 2005, The Times-News, Twin Falls, Idaho,

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Source: The Times-News

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