Workin’ on the Railroad All the Livelong Day : One-track minds have no place in the burgeoning model train landscape where an Anaheim Hills crafter passes the time away.

Maybe it’s the 1/24 scale model steel railroad bridge you first see when you approach the hilltop house, or the 3/4-mile of accompanying G-gauge track that nearly surrounds the place, running past little towns, around mountains, over rivers and through tunnels into the house. Maybe it’s the way those tracks and others continue through nearly every room, or the way the kitchen dining area is filled with little trees being painted and plaster houses being constructed by Cliff Springmeier, who was casually flicking his cigarette ash on the floor.

Certainly this, you say to yourself, this is a bachelor pad.

I had been pestering Springmeier since March to allow us to view his railroad setup, which local hobby shops maintained was the most extreme in the county. And every month Springmeier would politely put us off, saying he and friends were working on it nonstop and it just wasn’t ready to be viewed.

It still isn’t ready, and won’t be for years, but he did finally relent, allowing us to see the creation in progress. It’s pretty scary.

Springmeier, 60, has indeed been working on the railroad all the livelong day. Since he sold off his $60 million-a-year plastics distribution business in 1989, he’s passed the time away on his trains from 4:30 a.m. to 10 p.m. (with a couple of hours off for an afternoon nap) seven days a week. It’s not a solitary activity: He has seven people helping him, of about 15 he says have greatly contributed their time and skills over the years.

With that time and human effort, one could build some awfully nice houses, and Springmeier has done that as well, designing and building, among others, a $2.5-million manse in Orange Park. But that was easy going compared to his railroad project.

“I don’t know anybody who would be insane enough to do this,” he said in a rocky chain-smoker’s voice as he began a tour of his place.

Most of the rooms are dominated by oak platforms containing locomotive worlds in various states of completion. Some hold towns and switching yards, nearly finished but for details such as gravel and painted-on rust. Another holds a plywood framework for an extensive mountain railroad layout. Even though it will be out of view when completed, the wood is gracefully sawed and sanded like a finished product. As a backdrop to the scenes, the walls are painted in cloud patterns.

“Take a look under here,” Springmeier suggested, motioning to an open panel at the base of one layout designed to have six G-gauge trains running simultaneously. Beneath the tableaux on the plateau was a low, cedar-paneled chamber that would have looked like a midget Finnish sauna but for the tracks covering the floor and the immaculately neat electrical wiring bundled along the rafters. Two of the tracks ran up to a pillow leaning against a wall.

“This is the engine yard. I can store 23 engines and trains under there and electrically bring them out onto the railroad. I bring them into the yard, (the pillow was covering a hole in the wall) and can have them end up back on this layout or on another in the garage,” he said.

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He has video cameras and monitors to track the trains outside, and his various control panels--bearing colored charts resembling London Underground route maps--are linked by voice-activated intercoms. Once outside, the trains go over remote-controlled drawbridges and iron trestles sturdy enough for Springmeier to stride on and around mountains in the back yard. One of those, when finished, will house tiki torches and a smoke generator to simulate a volcano.

He had to rebuild the other mountain after it exhibited some volcanic traits of its own last Thanksgiving. A ruptured fire-pit gas line had caused natural gas to accumulate inside the concrete mini-mount, and it exploded, taking out a section of scenery and several of his house’s windows.

It has been reconstructed now, and one only realizes how much work remains to be done outside when ushered up a stairway to the train room in his garage attic. As he opened the trap door to the room, Springmeier said, “For this one, you have to go ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ even if you don’t mean it.”

The prompting wasn’t necessary. The low-ceilinged room contains a breathtakingly detailed HO-scale miniature of railroad-adjacent life, with 347 buildings and 2,500 tiny people (all hand-painted), an 11-foot trestle made from 6,000 pieces of wood and a combination of realistic and fanciful scenes of American life from 1850 to 1920. Because the only door is in the floor, the 800 feet of track and surrounding scenery entirely circle the room.

There’s everything from Indian battles to a mining-town toxic pond with dead foliage, all rendered in eye-straining detail. If a tiny character is fishing, you’re sure to find a far tinier bobber floating on the plastic water surface. Turn off the room lights and the scenes are lit by their storefronts and street lights.

“We have our little subtle things: Here’s a mugging. Then, you see this guy in the boat? That’s his wife on the dock screaming at him because instead of fishing he’s watching the nudes on that end of the beach. And here’s an auto wreck, a hooker and a drunk stumbling along. I come in here sometimes and have to say, ‘I can’t remember doing that,’ or ‘I don’t remember ever seeing that before,’ ” Springmeier said.

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When the rest of his house is finished--he thinks it may take as long as six years--it will all have a similar level of detail.

Many of the names on the little business buildings are those of friends who have helped build the stuff. All of the railroad equipment, though, bears the logo M.Y.R.R.

Springmeier explained, “That stands for My Railroad. That started as a kid because people would always ask me if my setup was a copy of the Pennsylvania or the B&O;, and I’d say, ‘No, it’s my railroad.’ And as I went along later, I enjoyed building things I liked rather than what’s prototypical. There are a lot of people in the hobby who are very prototypical. They’re nut and rivet counters who might say, ‘Oh, that doesn’t happen in a real railroad.’ But it does in mine. It’s more fun to build what you like.”

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He has liked model railroads since he got his first ones as a 12-year-old growing up in Cincinnati. He still has some of his childhood trains, along with more than 300 HO engines. Along the course of turning his plastics business from a three-employee operation into a 450-person, 23-office enterprise, Springmeier found the trains were a great way to let off steam.

“Even though the business was successful, when you’re the head of the company, all you hear about is the big problems. During the 23 years I did that, it was so therapeutic to sit and build these. I’m a very hyper person, and I can’t sit still. My mind is always churning, and this gave me something to apply that to.”

He once confined his locomotive lust to the attic room. But after selling his business--he cites the state’s “anti-business” climate as the reason--and splitting up with his second wife, his “little railroad empire” sprawled into the house and yard.

I wondered what the neighbors must think, particularly one stuck with a prime view of the outdoor rail line. Springmeier said, “Well, that guy also has trains in this gauge. He’s going to connect up to it over here. Besides, when this gets painted, it’s going to look prettier than most dog-run side yards.”

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Though unfinished, his back yard layout is eye-catching for the perspective: The backdrop to its tiny buildings is the distance-shrunk skyline of the county, and they seem oddly matched.

And just as the life-size state has had its seismic woes, Springmeier’s Lilliputian one is on shaky ground. As were many Anaheim Hills homes, his was significantly damaged in landslides last winter--the floor in one room is so uneven it’s like walking in Knott’s haunted house--and it, trains and all, may yet slip all the way down the hill.

Yet even a year ago, when Springmeier was required to evacuate his house each evening and sleep in a motel, he and his helpers were back in the daytime working on the railroad. Though he sometimes speaks of the slide zone as an inevitable cancer, he’s working as if it’s for posterity. When he’s gone to that big train yard in the sky, he plans for the house to be maintained and kept open “to charities, orphanages and everyone else.” Though he enjoys sharing the creation, he sometimes gets cranky about the looky-loos who have been showing up so far, because every time the doorbell rings, work stops.

He enjoys building his railroad more than he likes running the trains. When it comes down to it, Springmeier doesn’t even especially like real trains.

“I wouldn’t go eight feet to see a train or go to a train museum,” he declared. “In the hobby I think there’s a lot of people like me, who aren’t that interested in trains for trains’ sake but are interested because it is a great craft hobby. I don’t know of any others where you can work in as many materials as you can with trains. You weld bridges, wire electronics, pour concrete. You can work in everything from dirt to steel.”

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To him, it’s an art.

“You’re building a life scene, building life in a way, duplicating it. You see pictures, Rembrandts and stuff, but they’re just a little splotch, in one dimension. This is three-dimensional, with great depth. You can do anything here, have any scenes you want.

“I don’t do this so much to leave a mark on life. I think what I’ve enjoyed most in both my business and with my railroad has been to see people mature and grow in their abilities. When I started my business, we couldn’t afford to hire college graduates. You see their skills develop, see a guy who didn’t think he could spell his own name become manager of the sales division over 20 years. And there have been people who have come in here who were scared to death to paint a little figure, or use a little penknife, and they’ve become pretty damn fine little mechanics.”

He says it isn’t ego that drives him, at least mostly not that. “I built a big business, and I’m sure as hell building a big railroad,” he said with a laugh, “so maybe there’s just a little bit of that there. Mainly I’m trying to pass on the love of this craft.”