A Hobby That’s on Track : Diversions: Every month, about 100 model train enthusiasts meet in Tarzana to share their love of the scaled-down rails.

They grew up in such disparate places as Boston, Budapest and Placerville. And one is still growing up in Agoura.

Their childhood differences notwithstanding, all four have at least one thing in common. The third Friday of every month, they gather at St. Innocent Orthodox Church in Tarzana with about 100 other members of the Valley Toy Train Club, one of a handful of such clubs in the San Fernando Valley.

“The interesting thing about train collecting is that it’s for everybody. It’s not just one particular item or one particular era. Everybody can pick what they want,” said meet organizer Artie Lazarides, sporting a gray Valley Toy Train Club T-shirt and a well-preserved New England accent.

The 45-year-old Sherman Oaks resident collected trains as a child in Boston. He returned to the toy train fold seven years ago for the same reason many others come back.

“You remember it as a kid. One day you say, ‘That’s it; I’m going to go back into trains.’ You find ‘em one day in the attic or your dad says, ‘Here, son, here’s the trains that I had.’ ”

And today, a lot of trains seem to be making their way out of the attics of America. Nationally, there are nearly 300,000 people who collect toy trains, according to Russell G. Larson, editor and publisher of Model Railroader, the industry’s largest monthly magazine. The publication has a circulation of 214,000--California accounts for 21,000 of those subscribers.

The Valley Toy Train Club is an operating club, which means that members who do not have a layout at home can bring in their trains and run them on the club’s tracks. (A layout is an oval of tracks on which hobbyists run their trains.) At every meet, a dozen or so members link their portable, four-foot track modules to form a large layout.

It’s a perfect arrangement for Bob Russell, a 77-year-old North Hollywood resident who was a chief engineer and department manager for the city of Los Angeles before retiring in 1979.

“I joined the club a year ago. I had a layout years ago; now I just come to socialize and look at the trains,” he said.

Not everyone, though, has such a casual commitment to the hobby. Mike Borossa, 55, a mechanical engineer from Woodland Hills, re-entered the train market five years ago.

“I was in a situation where I was looking for some purpose to the hobby. I don’t specifically care to have the trains just run around in circles--it has to have a purpose.

“I looked at the different railroad companies that existed in the postwar era, the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s. They had certain branches that carry only freight and certain branches that had some beautifully running special passenger trains. I found that I’m partial to passenger trains.”

Borossa’s first set was a Marklin during his childhood years in Hungary and Austria. Marklin, the oldest toy train manufacturer in the world, began making one-gauge trains in 1891 in Goppingen, Germany.

(A gauge or scale is determined by the distance between the outside rails; the greater the distance, the larger the toy train. Standard, one- or G-gauge, and O-gauge are a few examples of the larger trains; S, H-O, N and Z gauges the smaller trains.)

Borossa has an O-gauge back-yard layout that duplicates the Rio Grande Western segment of Burlington Northern’s California Zephyr, a Chicago-Oakland passenger train system.

“Chicago Burlington & Quincy was an interesting railroad because it only stretched to Denver.

“From Denver, Rio Grande Western took over. They exchanged engines, but the people inside were not disturbed. From there, Rio Grande carried the train to Salt Lake City, where another switch was made. . . . Western Pacific’s engines carried the passengers on the final leg to San Francisco.”

Borossa’s prewar, standard-gauge counterpart at the club is Clyde Easterly, who began his collection in 1936 with a windup set.

A year later at Christmas, Easterly received his first electric train.

“In those days, for two bits or 50 cents, you could get a paper bag full of cars and locomotives. We spent the wartime years on a farm up by Lake Tahoe with no electricity. Electric trains don’t run too well without electricity.

“In ‘46, we moved to a war housing place, called Vanport in Portland, Ore., and I started picking up trains again. Then on Memorial Day in ‘48, we got hit by a flood and lost everything.”

Easterly, a geotechnical engineer for the city of Los Angeles, earnestly resumed his hobby during his college days in the late ‘50s at Arizona State University. Most of his trains and locomotives were purchased during the ‘60s and ‘70s.

“I got about a thousand pieces of rolling stock,” the bespectacled Easterly said with a chuckle. (Rolling stock is cars, locomotives and anything else on wheels.)

That would make his standard- and O-gauge collection one of the largest in the country, according to a Model Railroader official.

Easterly, 59, knocked out a wall between two bedrooms in his Van Nuys home to make room for his standard- and O-gauge operating layout. Above the layout are shelves “about six to eight inches apart that are loaded with trains.”

The recession’s effect on the local toy train trade has not been overwhelming, according to Lazarides.

“People are still coming to the meets to look. They may not spend as much as before the recession, but if they find a piece they want, they’ll buy it,” he said.

In addition to swapping stories and rolling stock, members buy and sell engineers hats as well as new and used product catalogues.

Larson, speaking by phone from his headquarters in Waukesha, Wis., said his magazine started during the Depression and considers the hobby to be somewhat recession-proof.

“Model railroaders may cut down somewhat on their purchases, but they won’t give up their hobby,” he said.

“It generally appeals to more affluent people that are better fixed to withstand the recession.”

In fact, some toy trains that were purchased in the ‘50s and ‘60s, before the term collectible was synonymous with the trade, have appreciated astronomically.

Military pieces equipped with mock guns and radar antennas that had a $40 price tag in the ‘60s are selling in the $2,500 range, according to Lazarides.

Standard-gauge cars produced in the ‘30s and ‘40s were made of tin and usually sold for $5 to $10.

Since most of these cars are out of circulation and cars are no longer made of tin, their value today averages $200 per car.

Even so, some members have no interest in the increase in value of prewar trains nor a desire to emulate a bygone rail system.

J. Kaye, a 7-year-old club member, is a third-generation enthusiast.

His layout dominates a large room built specifically for trains in his family’s Agoura home.

Along with younger brother Jacob, 4, and his parents, Denise and Michael, J. J. makes tracks to the Tarzana club every month. And his attraction to toy trains is refreshingly simple.

“They’re fun to look at and they’re fun to run.”