It’s the Holiday HO Express!

by Tanya Agler

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays!

I remember my grandmother’s house at Christmastime. The tree had silver garland with an angel on top, the nut rolls were fresh out of the oven and sprinkled with powdered sugar, and the train layout took up almost the entire Florida room. My grandmother loved model trains and every year, she’d set up her model HO scale railroad on a layout with houses and businesses set up as a small town. There was a church, city hall, and a filling station among other structures. My cousin and I always knew the holidays were approaching because Grandma Jinx would pull out the boxes and wooden platform where we would help her brush liquid cement glue onto the board and lay lichen on top of that. Then she’d test the trains and we’d spruce up all the buildings before setting them in place. Grandma Jinx would always make a big production of the first real run, and the HO scale trains would always chug around the track. It was always so much fun to operate the controls. Almost as fun was visiting the local hobby store and getting to help choose the new business or house that would become part of the platform.

When I met my husband, I told him about my grandmother’s HO scale train layout and his eyes widened. I thought it was because he was impressed that someone would set up their train platform every Christmas. It turned out that his father’s hobby was model trains. The entire basement of their house was dedicated to the largest train platform I had ever seen in a private home. Dave lived and breathed model trains, even owning a business that sold trains and everything needed for a platform. It was a huge deal when our initials were added to one of the trees on the layout. The year after we met, Dave’s platform was selected as one of the North American stops on a tour and people from all over the world came to visit his platform and talk trains with him. After my grandmother’s stroke, Dave generously donated his time and effort to renovating her trains and getting them all in working condition again.

Whenever my family visits local history museums or children’s museums, I immediately look out for train platforms and look in wonder at them. I know firsthand the hard work that goes into creating and maintaining them.

So when it came time to write a holiday novel about the town historian, Crosby Virtue, who is in love with his best friend, Sami Fleming, a cosmetologist who offers to give him a makeover so he can find his true love once she heads off to her next adventure, trains naturally came to mind as an integral part of the story. In addition to train platforms, I also had a fun time traveling on the Santa Express in nearby Blue Ridge, Georgia, for a three-hour round trip just across the state border to McCaysville, TN. A fun family time, there was hot cocoa and jingle bells and, of course, a visit from Santa. In The Cowboy’s Christmas Match, Crosby is helping to renovate the Violet Ridge Express and finds himself in the position of having to give the keynote speech at the New Year’s train depot.

Here's the blurb for Crosby and Sami’s book (and yes, Crosby was named after Bing Crosby, the crooner who was the first to sing the perennial favorite, "White Christmas"!):

Will his best friend… Be his happily-ever-after? Accidentally agreeing to speak at the social event of Violet Ridge’s holiday season threatens to ruin quiet introvert and town historian Crosby Virtue’s whole December. His outgoing best friend, Sami Fleming, insists a makeover will cure his public-speaking fear—an extra-special Christmas gift as she’s leaving town to travel the world. Sami’s also sure her beautician skills will help Crosby meet the woman of his dreams. But Crosby already has—her. Now the clock is ticking… Can Crosby find the courage to tell Sami the words she suddenly, secretly, longs to hear?

Merry Christmas!

Have you ever visited or constructed an HO model scale train platform? If so, please share where and what you loved about it. If you haven’t seen an HO train platform, have you ever taken a train ride like a holiday Christmas ride with Santa or traveling to another town or cross-country? One commenter will receive an e-copy of The Cowboy’s Christmas Match.

Tanya Agler writes sweet, small-town contemporary romance novels with themes of hope and redemption. Her next Harlequin Heartwarming romance, The Hometown Hero’s Fourth of July, is coming in June of 2026. She lives in Georgia with her husband, four children, and her two dogs. She loves movies, waterfalls, and all things chocolate.

For more information about Tanya, please visit her website at https://tanyaagler.com or follow her on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/AuthorTanyaAgler/ or Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/tanyaaglerauthor/.