Toy-train in Christmas for Shacktown

[Daniel van Eijmeren]

HALVOR SANDVEN to OLAF SOLSTRAND, 18-12-2003:

> ['Christmas for Shacktown', OS 367] I didn't say that Scrooge didn't 
> deserve to be punished. He really did, but later stories show that 
> all his cash is intact, so it would be logical that he got his money 
> back some other way than using the toy-train. Rosa's explanation of 
> how this was done, works fine with me.

In an August 14, 1997 email to DCML, Rich Morrissey (Rich Morrissery?) 
wrote an interesting explanation which I consider the best one I've 
read so far. It's so terribly logical and simple, that I would *never* 
have thought of it, myself:

"If you'll recall, the crust over the quicksand *was* solid enough to 
keep all those tons of money from falling...it was just so delicately 
balanced that sending buckets down, as the kids suggested, might have 
broken it. Once the train had removed a ton or two, though, enough of 
the weight would've been removed so $crooge *could* send buckets down 
to recover the rest more quickly."

--- Daniël