Historical Society Sponsors Trains, Parade

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Category: News

Created on Thursday, 19 December 2024 15:03

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By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    A Christmas parade, a gingerbread house contest, and a model train show are on track to light up the weekend in events hosted by the Sitka Historical Society.
    Celebrations will kick off with a Christmas parade on Lincoln Street, followed by indoor events at Harrigan Centennial Hall.

Blake Conaway assembles a 1957 Lionel pastel-colored model train set, originally marketed for girls, at Harrigan Centennial Hall Wednesday. Nine train sets will be on display this weekend as part of the annual Christmas events hosted by the Sitka Historical Society. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

    The historical society’s family-friendly Christmas celebration has expanded in recent years, says executive director Hal Spackman.
    “We kind of set up a little gingerbread house contest and Christmas village, and it was popular,” Spackman said in an interview. “And then we added the model trains, and pretty quickly it’s grown into model trains, vintage toys and now we’ve decided to add a parade because we feel that’s one thing our community has been missing – a little Christmas parade.”
    This year’s model train display will have fewer vintage toys than in years past, but there are additional model trains to make up for that, he said. AC Lakeside and First National Bank are event sponsors. This is the first year the historical society has organized a parade.
     “I understand there used to be a Christmas parade quite a number of years ago, but nobody was doing it. So we said, ‘Well, let’s see if we can put something together, and encourage people to come out,’” Spackman said.
    The fact the parade comes on the shortest day of the year is a coincidence, but “the winter solstice parade of lights” will offer Sitkans a chance to come together outdoors on the first day of winter, he added.
    “It’s really about bringing the community together, and hopefully some little kids will want to be in the parade, and people will want to light up their little vehicles or whatever floats in, and different kinds of things, and just bring us together with that holiday spirit, which I think is always a good thing in a small community,” Spackman said.
    Anyone can join the parade for free. Lineup begins at 4:30 p.m. Saturday at the Crescent Harbor shelter, and the parade starts at 5 p.m. The gingerbread contest will take place an hour later at Centennial Hall, where the train show will be up and running.
    “It brings families together to put together gingerbread houses,” Spackman said. “And some of them are absolute marvels of artistic expression, whereas some are just little kids putting a lot of candy on a gingerbread house. So that’s what just makes it fun.”
    Entries for the gingerbread house contest are due at Centennial Hall by Friday.
    Blake Conaway, who is at work organizing the train layouts for display in two rooms of Centennial Hall, said trains captured his imagination as a kid. This year’s train show will include some vintage offerings, as well as an interactive layout.
    “We’ve got a special 1957 girls set that is on loan from Barbara Blood,” Conaway said. “It’s a pretty rare set with a pink engine, and pastel box cars.” It is a Lionel O-gauge model that runs on a two-rail track instead of the three rails of the usual Lionel toy train set.
    On another table will be a dynamic O-gauge train setup with controllers that visitors can operate themselves.
    “We have a new table for kids to run,” Conaway said. “I built a 3x12-foot table, and there’s a log loader and a coal loader that I’m going to set up just for people to run, to let you be the engineer. Should be kind of fun and exciting, kind of give a little more hands-on dynamic to the train show, which isn’t super typical.”
    In addition to the dozen or so O-gauge models, there will be others such as a tiny N-gauge train and a mid-sized Marklin HO model. Along with that, Ryan Keefe assembled a minuscule Z-gauge railroad, and Tyler Eddy pieced together a Lego village and train.
    One train will run through a tunnel that creates an optical illusion, the “disappearing train” that was first displayed last year.
     “That’s a post-War Lionel dealer display replica, and the train… disappears in a loop under the mountain that looks like it’s a short tunnel, but then the train just completely disappears into the table, there’s a little helix, and then it pops back out,” Conaway said.
    Also on display will be an old S-gauge American Flyer train on loan from the Carley family.
    All told, Conaway estimates there are about 200 feet of track on the main table and 400 feet of O-gauge track on display. Many of the trains will run through model wintertime villages and mountain scenes.
    “The museum has got out their holiday village Christmas display, which they’ve been kind of setting up for quite a few years. It’s got some neat porcelain buildings and a little snowy winter scene,” Conaway said. “And then the girls train is on an oval table with a little snow Christmas scene going through it.” A mountain with some tunnels and an elevated loop also are set up, “nothing too dynamic on it, really, but it will also have the buttons on the outside for people to run some of the operating accessories,” he said.
    Conaway can trace his enthusiasm as an avid train collector to his childhood experiences.
    “I had a train set in my grandparents’ basement when I was a kid. And we had a family friend that had this gigantic room in their house full of trains, and I think that that really sparked my interest when I was a child. And then I’ve got my own two boys, and during COVID I incorporated some extra space in our house into a train room, and kind of just continued to grow, pretty much, from there,” he said.
    The train display opens at 6 p.m. Saturday and will be open 11 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. through December 27, but will be closed on the 24th and 25th.