Halloween Village and Train with On-Board Sound
Take a tour through this compact Halloween model village and train layout, at night and day, past the abodes of well-known movie monsters like Frankenstein, Dracula, the Wolf Man, and more! The video features views from an onboard train ride, a walk down Main street, fly-overs, a graveyard, pumpkin festival, witch haven and more!
NEW! For a downloadable PDF document describing how this layout was created, click on the link below.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1RVlj...
This home Halloween-themed model train layout and village is based on sculptures and figures from Hawthorne Village (Bradford Exchange), Department 56, and Lemax – all on a home-built display with sculpted mountain and train tunnel. In addition to rare detailed high-quality collectible buildings and figures, this set includes steam locomotives modified with realistic sound and lighting.
The Bradford Exchange’s Hawthorne Village “Universal Studios Monsters” collection (retired) is the foundation for the main train set and several highly-detailed buildings related to the classic horror films of the past. Some of these beautiful rare collectibles are seldom seen now, so I’ve tried to focus on them in this video with close-ups and stills. Frankenstein, Dracula, the Mummy, the Creature From the Black Lagoon, and the Wolf Man are all featured in multiple scenes (with special guest appearances from the Invisible Man and Herman Munster).
For more details and photos of the wonderful Universal Studios Monsters set, see “the Big Scare” at https://thebigscare.wordpress.com/201...
Department 56 has long been considered a high-end source of holiday village decorations. Several of their detailed and well-painted Halloween and Fall themed buildings and figures are included in this display. Lemax (often found as limited editions from Michael’s craft stores) focuses largely on integrating sound and motion in their village buildings, and you will see (and hear) many of their Halloween action buildings on the video, also.
As a model train enthusiast, I was not satisfied with the primitive train sets and even standard Hawthorne Village train sets often sold for such holiday villages. Therefore, I “upgraded” this Halloween layout with improved locomotive control and on-board sound. I either substituted or enhanced the steam locomotives to use Digital Command Control (DCC) with sound – so, the operator can trigger steam whistles, bell, and other typical locomotive sounds to come directly from the locomotive itself, on-demand! It also allows multiple trains to run on the same track at the same time, with independent speed and direction control.
In addition, DCC enhances the lighting built in to most of the higher-end train cars, to be more realistic – most out-of-the box train cars have interior lights that are dim when the locomotive is running slow, and get brighter as the train goes faster. This is unrealistic – with DCC, track voltage is always 12v, so the passenger car lights are full bright at all times, more like real trains.
The upshot – more realistic operation of the trains! I modified the Moonlight Express (wolf-art theme train) locomotive to add DCC & sound to the Hawthorne Village standard. I plan upgrading my other theme-based locomotives, but for this video, I substituted a stand-in Colorado & Southern DCC loco for the Universal Monsters loco until I can modify the original for DCC and sound.
I know this video is long, but I hope you watch it carefully, to appreciate the details of the buildings and figures.
Some of the details to watch for:
Hunchback Fritz in Frankenstein's castle window
Waterfall on mountain side.
Witch's pot stirring
"Wine" tasting, Halloween style
Cat eyes
Grisly backyard Bar-B-Q
Witch on a bike - where does she go?
"Spookster" the dog's visitors
Witch's boyfriends - what has become of them?
Wolf coming down a fireman's pole (and associated voice clip)
Count Dogula's Haunted Castle
Invisible man's "invisible" hand
Enjoy, and let me know what you think!