WATERMAN - For many local families, the Christmas season isn’t complete without a trip on the Holiday Lights Train in Waterman.

“It’s a family tradition,” said Jason Pearson of Genoa, who was making his fourth annual family trip early Saturday evening. “It’s for the kids.”
For 19 years Peter and Charleen Robinson have conducted free holiday train rides on weekends in December. Beginning at dusk, the brightly-colored Waterman & Western Railroad, a 1/3-scale model F-3 electro-motive miniature train, gently rumbles past 400 lighted figures and 250,000 lights strung out on a one-mile track throughout Lions Community Park in Waterman. Some of the displays, such as the drummer boy, were just put up last weekend.

The rides, Pete Robinson said, are the Robinsons’ “gift to the world.”