TRAIN TIME: My 2022 Christmas Layout with Lionel's Polar Express

As usual I find myself trying to do a million things at once here at the ol' homestead, which means my normal posts will be delayed (unless things low down a bit later). However, this past couple of weeks have kept me busy with this year's Christmas layout which, in turn, has provided enough material for a post or two outside of the regular series I've been on of late.

When we moved into this house back in the '90s there was enough room for a decent train-running-under-the--Christmas-tree type layout.

Within a couple of years though the living room filled with so much furniture that future layouts turned into this:

There have been quite a few years during which there were no living room layouts. There were Christmas layouts set up out in The Cave but none of them were of the "train-running-under-the--Christmas-tree" type.

What changed? Wellll, during the past couple of years we've been slowly getting rid of all the big bulky furniture that took up so much area here in the living room. Enough so that just by moving the couch and small coffee table out of the way, there was room for a 4' (1m21.92cm) x 6 ' (1m82.88cm)  this year. I already had three sheets of 2'x4' particle board out in the shed so all I need was some 1"x2"s for bracing.

This year's layout

Running Lionel's Polar Express