Ever wanted to own a parade train car? This might be your chance.

Harry E. Horney Sr., loved clowning, and his preferred mode of transportation to children’s birthday parties and parades was a train car. That is, a parade train car: a baby blue, white and golden wooden train frame with “Quality Clowns” written in red on the side. It was built atop a 1969 Ford pickup, bell, whistle, smokestack and all.

“He loved driving that thing in parades,” said his son Harry E. Horney Jr., 72. “Sometimes he would go by himself. Other times he’d take a couple clowns with him, depending, I guess, on what the people wanted.”

The parade train was central to the Quality Clowns brand, and when it was listed for sale on Facebook Marketplace in Essex a few weeks ago for $35,000, multiple people recognized it as Horney Sr.’s. Several had memories of seeing him as Smokey the Clown and the train at children’s birthday parties. The man selling it, Harry Campbell, bought it a few years earlier from Horney’s sons, who were trying to sell their father’s belongings after his death in 2019 at age 86.

Horney Jr. said his father owned the parade train for over 25 years. It was built in 1969 for McDonald’s store openings by the Hargrove Corp., a company that builds parade floats; various Ronald McDonald clowns had driven the “McTrain” in local parades. The Hargrove Corp. also made parade floats for presidential inaugurations, including a steam locomotive for the 1997 Bill Clinton ceremony. Horney Sr. bought it in Virginia in 1994 and drove it to Essex. “My father would drive that on the Beltway, 60 miles an hour,” his son said.

His father loved buying odd, out-of-the-ordinary things. He loved trains, and his home was filled with memorabilia. The McTrain was one of his prized possessions. “He honestly believed in his heart that thing was worth a million dollars,” Horney Jr. said. “It wasn’t, but he almost believed it, and that’s all that mattered.”

Campbell, 81, had been eyeing that parade train car for years. “When I first saw it, I thought, ‘Gee, I’d like to have that,’” Campbell recounted. He thought about it constantly, and whenever he ran into Horney, he would ask whether he could take it off his hands. “I like old stuff,” he reasoned, pointing to the 1937 Plymouth he fixed up and keeps in his garage.

Campbell grew up by the Gunpowder River; his childhood home was 15 houses from the Amtrak Gunpowder River Bridge. Trains were part of his life. As a kid, he would jump off the bridge to swim in the river. The train operators would blow their whistles when they saw him.

When Campbell bought the parade train from the Horney brothers for $30,000, it had not been used for a couple of years and had mechanical problems. But this would not be an issue for Campbell. “He still wanted it,” Horney Jr. said.

It took Campbell about a month to fix it up. He repainted parts of the frame and installed a 4.9-liter Ford six-cylinder engine, front and rear cameras and a new air pump.

He recently settled into the red-and-mustard-yellow upholstery and turned on the ignition. The parade train chugged like a train. “That’s the air pump,” he said.

Deftly navigating past parked cars, Campbell backed out of the Back River Garage, an automotive shop he’s owned since 1980, and onto Eastern Boulevard. He pulled a yellow string to ring the bell, blew the train whistle and was off.

Campbell chuckled every time he noticed someone staring out their window, phone aloft. He said weekends are better for taking the parade train for a drive because families are out with their kids.

He likes how children react whenever they see him drive the parade train. “They have to go to a train yard to see a train, but around here they can see it right down the road,” he said.

He drives it a few times a year, most often at parades organized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars post in Essex.

He’s sorry he needs to sell the parade train, but he wants to close the garage and there’s no place for it. “My age is starting to get to me. I just don’t have time for everything. I don’t have time to have fun.”

He has not received any offers, but he hopes someone just as into trains will buy it. Even better if they could keep it accessible to children who want to take a ride.

“It brings me back to being a kid,” Campbell said. “It’s just a lot of fun.”