The Ties That Bind : San Marcos Man Is Immersed in a Tiny World

Seventy-eight-year-old Roy Nimmo has taken the plunge into model railroading.

He is the self-appointed superintendent of the SP&R--as; in Swimming Pool & Roy--Railroad.

Daily, Nimmo walks out the back door of his home in San Marcos and climbs down into his swimming pool, sans water, where he immerses himself in a world of HO-scale locomotives, freight and passenger cars, country towns, farms and a ski resort.

From his control console, he eases two long trains out of their spur lines and into opposing directions along his main line, timing it perfectly so they meet at a siding and pass one another. He nudges a rheostat switch, and the enclosed patio is filled with the sounds of clanging bells, train whistles, steam and the clickety-clack of trains on tracks.

Sure, there are bigger railroad layouts. But not many are inside swimming pools.

Smitten After Retirement

Nimmo was smitten by model railroading in 1975, after he retired as a heavy-equipment operator for a pipeline contractor. Trading in macho bulldozers for childlike miniatures, he initially set up his train layout in a 14-square-foot shed in the back yard of his home, where he and his wife, Phyllis--today is their 53rd wedding anniversary--have lived for 30 years.

Five months later, Nimmo began jealously eyeing the weather-protected swimming and exercise pool, which the couple had been using less and less. It is 12 by 28 feet, and measures 3 feet deep at one end, 5 feet deep at the other.

“We were having lunch one day, and he said, ‘You know, we’re not using that pool a whole lot. We can drain it and I can put in a beautiful sunken garden for you--or we could put the trains in there,’ ” Phyllis said with a smile.

“So I said, ‘Go ahead, bring your trains in.’ He had the pool drained the next morning,” she said.

In fact, Phyllis is hardly a railroad widow. Supportive of her husband’s hobby to the nth

degree, she handpainted each of the 640 tiny human figures that are stationed about the layout, helped shape the mountains and hillsides, and even painted the backdrops to the layout--by leaning over the side of the swimming pool and painting upside down.

Can Think of Worse Things

“When you get older, you need an active interest,” she said. “That’s what’s wrong with so many older people: They don’t have a hobby. And I can think of a lot of worse things that Roy could be doing than this.”

Nimmo calls his hobby “brain exercise,” his daily excursion into a miniature world that requires not only patience but attention to detail--like whether all the switches are properly opened and closed so he won’t derail a 40-car freight train at the far bend.

Nimmo has lost track of the track he’s laid, and of how many locomotives, passenger cars and freight cars he has purchased or reconstructed over the years after countless visits to hobby stores and swap meets.

There are maybe 120 cars. Probably 30 or 40--maybe 50?--locomotives, ranging from the most contemporary Amtrak edition to the steam locomotives of the 1860s. More than a dozen complete trains are in sidings around the layout.

Then there’s the attention to detail on the train board itself: the coal bunker rigged by Nimmo with a chute to actually dump little black stuff into the coal tenders; the helicopter and single-engine airplane--HO scale, of course--with propellers that whirl on cue; the snow-removal locomotive with a blower fan that spins; and the movie theater, complete with fiber-optic lighting for that special marquee twinkling effect.

“ ‘The African Queen’ has been playing there for a long time,” Phyllis said.

A Few Strategic Mirrors

A few strategically placed mirrors give observers views of both sides of some scenes and add to the illusion of the layout being larger than it is. The farming scenes along the periphery of the pool wall are in even-smaller N-scale to add to the sense of distance.

Nimmo proudly points to some of his prized possessions: the model of the San Diegan, the first passenger diesel streamliner to run between Los Angeles and San Diego, starting in 1938. The brass, working replica of an Allegheny locomotive and tender that he figures is worth $1,400 today because of its craftsmanship.

His wife points to a miniature castle a friend brought from Germany that she converted into a ski lodge. An egg-shaped panty-hose canister has been converted into a miniature mountaintop observatory.

For a while, there was a recirculating stream bed, but its pond was converted into a park scene because the water was being absorbed into the wooden board.

The Nimmos love showing off the SP&R; Railroad to visitors. Their home is a tour stop for serious model railroaders who come to San Diego for conventions; tour buses have pulled into his driveway with loads of seniors on a day’s outing, and local schoolchildren are frequent visitors--and a special pleasure to the Nimmos, who have no children of their own.

“Kids today have never experienced standing on a track platform and felt the vibration of the train and the steam,” Nimmo said. Although he can’t offer the vibration or the steam, there is that sound track of his.

The greatest advantage of a swimming pool layout, Nimmo said, is that it offers great, unobstructed views of the entire layout from above. The drawback, of course, is that it makes expansion difficult.

Unless, maybe, the Nimmos decide to add a spa line.