For a Model Family, Life Stays on Track

A family that builds trains together stays together. That’s the creed in the Canfield home, where model trains take center stage.

Fred Canfield was an 11-year-old boy, living with his parents and brother in Ho-Ho-Kus, N.J., when a family tradition was launched. The computer software programmer remembers that holiday season four decades ago when his father thought the train running around the Christmas tree was a bit ho-hum.

“He thought it was a little boring, so he added some circus cars to it,” said Canfield, now 58. “Then, we all started doing some serious model building.”

Canfield was hooked in 1950, the same year he won his first blue ribbon for his work on the family project at his elementary school’s hobby contest.

Soon, the holiday pastime became a year-round affair as the project expanded to an 8-by-16-foot layout that, in miniature, replicated the big-time circus arenas of the late 1940s. The basement served as its home base when it wasn’t being displayed at train shows on the East Coast.

Today and Sunday, Canfield and his wife, Claudia, will be at the Great American Train Show at the Anaheim Convention Center, showing off their labor of love, the Canfield Family Circus.

It’s an elaborate exhibit, which the Canfields keep housed in a custom-built trailer at their Fullerton home. The trailer was driven into the convention center, where it was unfolded Friday afternoon in preparation for the show.

Upon close inspection, half of the layout is an adaptation of the 1946 Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus with a three-ringed big top. Inside, tightrope walkers, flying trapeze artists and clowns perform before 4,000 spectators.

In addition to the main event, there are 47 smaller tents: some are dressing rooms for performers, others are for dining and still others house circus animals in cages.

The other half of the layout includes an industrial zone, a residential neighborhood, a downtown and an amusement park. The park features elevated gondolas, miniature golf, pony rides, a Ferris wheel, a roller coaster, a petting zoo and motorboat ride.

A double track circles the perimeter of the giant display, each carrying trains going in opposite directions.

There’s even an automobile accident, surrounded by emergency vehicles with flashing red lights. The scene was created 15 years ago when a toy car of one of Canfield’s daughters broke.

“One of my daughters was a car collector, and when one of her cars broke, she asked, ‘You can’t use this can you?’ So we came up with the accident scene,” Canfield said.

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His two daughters, who now are grown and no longer live at home, hand-painted each individual spectator in the circus, made tiny bales of hay for the horse stables and helped with displays.

Each year, something new is added to the layout. This year, the trolley car, which connects the downtown to the amusement park, is the latest addition. The unique layout uses the popular HO scale--1.87 inches to the foot--which came to the United States from England in the 1930s.

It was two decades ago when Fred and Claudia Canfield moved to California from Florida and decided to start on the model.

“It’s the West Coast version of Fred’s family circus,” Claudia Canfield said. The model Fred had worked on as a child had been on display in an Arizona restaurant but was destroyed several years ago in a fire.

Besides the Canfield creation, 13 other model railroads created by people from across the nation will be on display at the Great American Train Show, and more than 10,000 model trains will be on exhibit and for sale. Kids will be encouraged to operate a Lionel Fantasyland railroad that comes with actual-size throttles and buttons.

The event runs from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is $5 for adults and free for children. The convention center is at 800 W. Katella in Anaheim.