Tiny Trains
Published Wednesday May 14th, 2008
Model train display provided hands-on experience for children, parents alike
Despite their small size, the locomotives at last weekend's model train show were most definitely not toys.
The various sets on display at the French Fort Cove Eco Centre cost between several hundred and several thousand dollars, sometimes built up over decades.
Blake Johnstone has been collecting model trains since the 1950s, encouraged by his father, who worked on the real-life railroad.
"I find it relaxing," he said, standing over his own set, with several metres of track and two plastic and metal trains with steam engines the size of small water bottles.
"I enjoy coming to train shows and having kids see what it used to be like, because they've never seen a steam engine, except in a museum."
Johnstone's trains are mostly of the smaller, older variety, although they still run using wires under the tiny tracks, attached to a separate control panel.
Over at the O'Briens' table, things were a little different. The trains were bigger and more modern, modeled after existing CN designs.
The level of detail was extreme: Each part of each carriage is made of the same material the real-life cars would be built from. The weight of the aluminum, steel, plastic and glass makes each car heavy to pick up. Inside the windows, passengers and crew go about their business, frozen in plastic.
It's a whole different culture, with different names for different scales and different rail lines from past and present, with sometimes long wait times for the part you really want.
"This black and white CN one took about a year to come in," said 11-year-old Billy O'Brien, pointing to a car the size of an aerosol can.
"My father prefers to buy CN, but I have one Santa Fe and I also ordered a Boulder Express."
Like Johnstone, O'Brien names his father, Pat, who was also at the event, as the biggest influence on his hobby.
"[He] had a couple from when he was a kid, and they sort of looked interesting when I was a little kid," he said.
"Then my father ordered a couple, then we ordered a couple more, then a couple more."
One table over, Jay Augustine said his young son Cole took a more circuitous path to the hobby.
"We started up with Thomas the Train," he said. "Then onto the GeoTrax, and then on to the model trains. We'll end up like those guys over there, collecting it for a hobby."
The Augustines' table was the most complicated of all, with multiple levels of mostly plastic tracks from the Fisher Price GeoTrax line, mainly for younger hobbyists. Amidst the chaos, a smaller track for a more mature model train can be seen.
Over the course of the two-day show, young children crowded around the exhibit, some protesting loudly when the time came to be led home by bemused parents.
"The train shows we've been to before have been kind of, like, ‘don't touch,'" Augustine said.
"We wanted to bring the trains in, encourage the kids to touch and have fun. We had kids around the table, under the table, trying to get on top of the table. We got offers for baby-sitting."
Surprisingly, Augustine wasn't much of a model train enthusiast himself until his son came along.
"I just do it for him," he said.
"I grew up with hockey sticks and [footballs]. I was a play-in-the-mud kind of guy. But he just loved trains, and I've been learning with him as we go."
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