MOTOR SPORTS / VINCE KOWALICK : Saugus Engineering Train Racing Special

It is being called the World Championship of Train Racing.

Events just don’t get that kind of billing unless they can deliver. But this one promises to deliver with a bang.

Maybe a few.

Train racing--a wacky event in which three beat-up stock cars chained together as a train race against other trains on a figure-eight course--has developed over the past few years into one of the hottest attractions in short-track racing throughout Southern California.

It can be terrifying to watch: Six vehicles moving as two on a perilous collision course at speeds that are increasing almost weekly; a driver of a large car (typically a Cadillac) towing two smaller, engine-less cars (typically Ford Pintos) with an often-harried driver in the “caboose” for navigational purposes.

Racing fans just can’t seem to get enough of it. Tonight at Saugus Speedway, they’ll at least get a little extra.

After the final checkered flags fall on the 100-lap Sportsman and 75-lap Grand American Modified main events, train racing once again will close the track’s program, simultaneously bringing down the curtain on the season-ending Fall Spectacular.

However, the ante has been upped considerably for the engineers of these crazy vehicular creations.

Instead of the traditional 15-lap train race, drivers will be chugging 25 laps toward a first-place prize of $1,000--double the standard first-place purse.

Moreover, the event will kick off a three-race points series that will resume next Saturday at El Cajon Speedway near San Diego and conclude Oct. 9 at Orange Show Speedway in San Bernardino. The winner of each race will receive $1,000 with a winner-take-all championship prize of $1,500.

“This is getting big,” said driver and train builder Butch Pfankuchen of Simi Valley.

Pfankuchen, a power-equipment mechanic at Trade Tech College in Los Angeles, is largely responsible for the growth of train racing, which was created in 1988 by Saugus promoter Ray Wilkings and has since spread to other tracks, including El Cajon and Orange Show.

Pfankuchen, along with his brother Gary, has been the overwhelming leader of the construction derby of trains at Saugus and has influenced other train builders. He has been featured in numerous racing publications.

“I buy junky cars out of people’s yards,” Pfankuchen said. “I leave little flyers on cars that say, ‘I’ll offer you $50 to $100 for your car. Then I’ll take it out and wreck it.’ ”

Pfankuchen, who won train-racing titles at Saugus in 1988 and ’89 and ranks third this season, has two trains this season and his brother one.

Richard Ingram of Hesperia, whose brother Dennis also races in the event, constructed a train specifically for racing at Saugus and another for Orange Show.

Ingram also has a few extra cabooses, as well as no shortage of people willing to ride in them.

“I have a list a mile long of people wanting to ride in the caboose,” Ingram said. “It looks dangerous but it’s actually pretty fun.”

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Add Spectacular: The Fall Spectacular also marks the kickoff of the fourth annual year-end Southern California Sportsman series, a four-week points race at Saugus, El Cajon, Orange Show and Mesa Marin Raceway in Bakersfield.

Each track will stage a 100-lap Sportsman main event for which the winner will earn $1,500--nearly three times the standard $600 first-place prize for a 40-lap victory at Saugus.

The winner of the four-race series, which will include drivers from all four tracks, will pocket $1,500. The total purse of the series is estimated at more than $56,000.

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Cameo or comeback?: Santa Clarita Valley racing legend Oren Prosser, 53, will take the wheel of a stock car tonight at Saugus Speedway for the first time since his unexpected retirement in 1985.

Prosser, who won five Sportsman titles at Saugus between 1964 and 1972, is calling his appearance a one-shot deal, but depending on his performance, who knows?

Almost from the moment he put it in park eight years ago, Prosser, who now lives in Pasadena, admittedly has had second thoughts about retirement.

He said he might return next season racing Dwarf cars--tiny replicas of 1930s stock cars that are raced regularly at Ventura Raceway.

“I’ve been asked (why I retired) a lot of times and I guess I was just in a bad frame of mind,” Prosser said. “I figured I’d go back in a year, but I didn’t. It was just kinda something that happened.”

Tonight, in the 100-lap Sportsman main event that will highlight the track’s Fall Spectacular, he will try to make things happen in a car owned by Don Johnson, his former racing partner.