The Empire Builders : To the Serious Model Railroader, It’s Not Just Little Trains Running Around on Tracks, It’s Creating a Town and Countryside in Which to Display Them

“I would never become a slave to this hobby,” said Fred Schrock, sitting in the upstairs room he had specially built for the hobby he would not be a slave to. “I don’t eat, sleep and drink this stuff.”

So how does the longtime Santa Ana resident explain the 109 miniature locomotives and more than 300 railway cars he has accumulated during his 35 years as a model railroader deluxe?

“That is what’s known as a hole in your head,” he grinned.

There are about 275,000 people in this country with similarly punctured craniums who collect, build and run model trains as a hobby, according to Russ Larson, editor of Model Railroader magazine.

Still, it is not the model trains themselves that stun the casual observer, but the often elaborate track layouts designed to display them. The biggest and the best fill entire rooms with plaster and plastic landscapes whipped into a frenzy of mountains, rivers, towns and canyons.

It is detail work on a huge scale.

Schrock might disagree, but there is an element of empire building in the psychic makeup of the serious model railroader. The drive to build ever larger and grander layouts can be addicting. For those modelers teetering on the brink of fanaticism, it is a world where miniature is mighty and more is never enough.

It can also be a lot of fun.

“I wouldn’t do it unless I enjoyed it,” said Schrock, looking over the room-sized layout he has been working on for 25 years. “Any person should have an outside interest other than their work. Model railroading can be a very valuable thing as a release from the pressures of making a living.”

Schrock says those pressures--along with a lifelong interest in railroading--helped lead him to the hobby when he was a public relations official for the electric company during the 1950s. He says he found himself coming home at night fed up with people and listening to complaints. Model building became an escape from his daily encounters with an aroused humanity.

Model railroading did not turn into the solitary pursuit he had envisioned, however. As his two sons reached junior high school age, they showed a youthful enthusiasm for their father’s expanding hobby. Sensing this opportunity, Schrock told the boys they could help him build his railroad--providing they kept their grades up and did their homework.

“After that, I had no trouble with the boys as far as their schoolwork was concerned,” he said.

Thus, for Schrock, model railroading was not only a salve for the pain of dealing with people, it proved an effective instrument of academic extortion. Multiple motivations are not uncommon in the world of model railroading.

It is a hobby that thrives on variety, according to John Wissinger, president of the local chapter of the National Model Railroaders Assn.

“The thing about model railroading is that you can get into it as deeply as you want,” he said. “From a piece of plywood with some track nailed to it, to a basement which duplicates an actual railroad system, it can be as simple or elaborate as you want it to be.”

It is hardly surprising that the appeal of model railroading is usually rooted in a lifelong fascination with trains. But like a real railroad, the branch lines of the hobby can lead off in different directions.

Some enthusiasts who like to model and collect trains don’t really care for layout work, while others devote hundreds of hours to building realistic layouts, yet have no real interest in running their trains.

Some modelers are caboose freaks. Some are “kitbashers,” freethinkers who combine elements of two or more train kits into a hybrid original. Others are hooked on timetables and schedules that they use to route trains as if working a full-sized railroad.

Grime is golden to an avid modeler--fake grime, that is.

Weatherizing a layout with paint and colored chalk dust can enhance realism. Mud, rust, smoke and water effects can be duplicated in a variety of splatters, streaks, smudges and stains--all to scale, of course.

The quest for realism can be a painstaking lesson in the art of minutia. Railway ties are often individually cut and stained from balsa wood. Shreds of moss, lichens and ferns are carefully crafted into bushes and trees. Tiny decals are applied to railway cars.

It is a detail-driven hobby not likely to attract the nervous, the impatient or the clumsy.

Sometimes an ingenious slice of life is designed into a layout. One such innovation described in a hobby magazine was a drive-in movie that actually projected a film onto a miniature screen. (The trick was accomplished using a projector, a periscope and a system of mirrors mounted beneath the layout.)

Such realism has its price, however.

Vic Prior, co-owner of Discount Train Warehouse in Brea, says some people are reluctant to take up the hobby because of the monetary horror stories generated by the truly addicted.

“People do spend thousands of dollars on this hobby,” he agreed. “But that’s at the high end. It’s very much geared to what an individual can afford.”

Prior says a quality HO-scale starter setup that includes track, trains, power packs and control equipment can be put together for about $100. Some prepackaged kits cost as little as $20, although “you get what you pay for,” he warned.

While beginning modelers dabbling in HO scale may lust after the $300 and $400 handmade, solid-brass locomotives he sells in his shop, Prior says quality plastic models are available for a tenth of the price.

Cost is sometimes a matter of scale--as in G, O, HO and N, which are the most popular train sizes available. Anyone contemplating a plunge into model mania must decide which scale best suits his or her tastes and needs.

G is the behemoth of the model lines. Sometimes called the Yuppie Express, these milk-carton-size locomotives and cars are popular with the thirtysomething crowd, especially upscale homeowners who want to build garden layouts. To construct a realistic indoor layout using G-scale, you need only slightly less square footage than that of a circus tent. Engines range in price from $45 to more than $1,000.

O, on the other hand, is the traditional, Lionel-type train layout that you got as a Christmas present when you were 8 years old. Sturdy and realistic, O-scale is also the train size most likely to be commandeered by envious fathers two minutes after the wrappings come off Christmas morning.

HO is the half-sized cousin of O. Two out of every three serious model railroaders are HO fans, according to a survey by Model Railroader magazine. Highly detailed and heavily accessorized, HO is the king of custom layouts.

Part of the shrinking trend in model train sizes is N-scale. Only about half the size of HO, some model railroaders joke that N stands for Nearly Not There. Nevertheless, the tiny trains are growing rapidly in popularity. Due to their compact size, complex layouts can be built in a limited space. N currently ranks second in market share behind HO at about 20%.

There are several other scales--including minuscule Z with locomotives roughly the size of a roll of Lifesavers--but their combined sales make up only a fraction of the $210 million expected to be spent on the hobby this year.

If you want to start model railroading but either don’t have the time to build a layout or are seriously lacking in mechanical skills, pre-made layouts are available from several Orange County hobby shops.

Bill Colley, owner of The Golden Spike in Irvine and a former fireman on the famed Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad in Colorado, offers half a dozen pre-made layouts complete with track, trains and transformers. Colley says he has sold six or seven of the layouts--which range in price from $275 to $640--as special holiday orders.

“They’re compact enough to fit into some of the smaller houses in the Irvine area, but still have plenty of room for adding buildings and landscaping,” he said.

From such humble beginnings are sown the seeds of a hobby that can someday fill an entire garage or spare bedroom.

If you lack floor space but still want the thrill of working on a large layout, you might consider joining a modular railroad club. These clubs divide up the work of modeling by assigning small sections (often 2x4 feet) of a planned layout among their individual members. When the portable modules are complete, they are joined together into one massive, unified railscape. Sometimes dozens of modelers are involved in these team projects, creating layouts that could fill a small warehouse.

What sort of people are attracted to a hobby such as model railroading? Wissinger tosses out words like “quiet” and “family-oriented.”

Prior is amused by the question. “I guess (model railroaders) are people who can go to a convention and not throw their drinks on the wall,” he said.

Surveys conducted by Model Railroader magazine form a composite profile of the typical model train fan. He is 44 years old, earns $35,000 a year, is usually college-educated, married and has children. He has been in model railroading for 20 years and spends 261 hours a year working on his hobby. He is most likely to share his modeling interest with a son.

If there seems to be a strong male cast to that profile, that is because about 98% of those pursuing the hobby are men, according to editor Russ Larson, although “more and more women are starting to get interested.”

Probably the greatest surge in feminine participation is coming from the growing ranks of husband-and-wife modeling teams. While the women are usually more interested in scenery and background painting than working on trains and equipment, Larson says their overall enthusiasm for the hobby is high.

It is agreed that to be married and to be a modeler would be a miserable existence without an understanding spouse.

Irene Macik can no longer see the train layout built by her husband, John, in the garage of their Buena Park home. The 14 trestles and bridges, 10 tunnels, waterfall, deep river gorge, mountains, meadows, 477 feet of track, and the locomotives and rail cars that traverse them are all a shadowy blur to her since she lost most of her sight to a progressive eye disease two years ago.

But ask the former art teacher what she thinks about the miniature world fashioned by her husband over the past five years from plaster, paint and patience, and she quickly responds, “Oh, it’s so beautiful.”

Until her vision finally slipped away, Irene used her art knowledge to help her husband select colors for the layout. One of her last acts as an active artist was to paint three landscape murals on the garage walls to serve as backdrops.

“My husband wanted me to paint a little town in the distance on one of the murals, but I couldn’t see good enough to do that,” she said, resting her hand on a corner of the layout. A cheerful woman with a quick smile, Irene says her husband installed special sound systems that imitate echoing train whistles, bells and chugging steam engines to help her enjoy the layout even though she can’t see it.

“I love to hear the sounds,” she said. “I can hear the train coming and can follow it around the track.”

John says his wife still helps him with artistic matters concerning the layout.

“She suggested that I put some colored lights on a dimmer to make it look like sunset,” he said. “There’s also a moonlight effect we can get. I’m going to wire (the layout) up for lights so that we can run the train as if it was night.”

The retired mechanic turned a knob on the control panel, adjusting the lights to mimic early twilight.

“With the low lights, the train running, and the whistle and echo, you can really transfer yourself right into a different time and place,” he said. “It’s just like another world.”

But like the real world, it can be a transitory place.

When a train buff makes that final run to the great modeler in the sky, he often leaves behind a piece of fabricated real estate too big to move, too individual to sell.

“There isn’t much market for used layouts,” Prior says. “A lot of (widows) will bring in their husband’s locomotives and buildings and stuff to sell, but the layout itself is usually torn up and thrown away.”

Many times, trains and accessories are given or sold to friends. The roundhouse and turntable on Macik’s layout were acquired in this way.

“My friend had a real nice layout when he died about four years ago,” said Macik, rubbing a finger over a length of track. “His wife sold a lot of it piece by piece. That’s how I got this train car.”

On a siding overlooking a river of blue resin sat a small, cream-colored boxcar. Lettered on the side were the words Apocalypse Southern.

“I wanted to save it as a souvenir,” Macik said, reaching over to tap the car a few inches down the track. “It’s sort of a crazy thing to call a railroad, don’t you think?”