It’s a Business, but It’s Also Just Train Fun

What hangs from the ceiling, is made out of wood and brass, winds through kitchens, bathrooms and bedrooms, and sometimes is even formed in the shape of a guitar?

The answer: Model train tracks, though not the ones kids find under Christmas trees.

For 12 years, Mission Viejo resident Joe Black has been taking model train design to new heights. Around the country and around the world, Black has built custom train tracks to hang from the ceilings of nearly 500 homes and businesses.

“There’s no practical purpose for them except that they’re really neat,” said Black, 62.

At Overhead Railways by Joe Black, he uses modern versions of the old-time classic models that, he said, don’t fall off the tracks like the model trains of years past.

“Today’s trains are now high-precision, high-quality machines and no longer the rattling toys they used to be. They are a neat little piece of machinery,” Black said.

One car costs about $75. An engine can cost as much as $4,000.

Black was a sales manager when he got started on his new career. He had set up a track, just as a hobby, on the floor of his house.

“After three to four weeks on the living room floor, my wife said, ‘I’d like to have my living room back.’ Then it hit me: I can put this in the air,” Black said.

So he experimented with hanging the tracks from the ceiling, and his business was born.

Black first visits a client’s home to see what’s possible. He then takes measurements and creates a blueprint in his warehouse.

“It’s really interesting how he installs it,” said Norris McLean, of Anaheim Hills and one of Black’s recent customers. “He assembles the whole thing on the floor of the room he wants it in, then a laser beam pointer marks on the ceiling where he drills the hole. The wiring is done through hollow tubes so you can’t see the wires. It’s a really slick procedure.”

The tracks take about four weeks to complete. Black and his one employee drill, measure, saw, bend and sculpt the wood to form the custom pattern the client chooses. The wood--he uses solid oak, birch and cherry--also is stained to match staircase banisters or trim in the rooms.

The major obstacle Black has to overcome is bending the wood.

“You can’t just bend dry wood, something needs to be done to make it pliable,” he said. “I used to throw it in the pool and let it soak for 3 days. I have a 16-foot steamer tank now.”

Some clients have simple requests, perhaps just a circular track to hang in a child’s bedroom. Others are more complicated, with tracks winding from a kitchen through the dining room and upstairs, via tunnels build into walls, or even with double-decker tracks.

It’s not a hobby for the true model train enthusiast, Black said, because there are no crossing gates or buildings.

“All you need is a large scale train and a transformer and I do the rest,” he said.

It doesn’t come cheap.

Installations can start at $2,000. The guitar shape requested by one client ran $7,000. A whole house, upstairs and down with a double-decker track can cost more than $130,000.

“These are no-budget people,” Black said.

Right now, in the 5,500-square-foot, multimillion-dollar home of a retired developer in Rancho Mirage, Black is installing almost 1,800 feet of track, winding it through almost every room in the home. There will be 27 trains running at the same time, with 16 in reserve that can be electronically switched into the main system.

Not surprisingly, many of his clients are wealthy businessmen. And more than a few end up trying to outdo each other.

The guitar-shaped track prompted another client to go a little further: tracks in shape of a guitar--with a strap.

“What is so interesting to me is, who are these people who have these tracks in their homes?” Black said. “I mean, they are celebrities, doctors, lawyers, developers. And yet they treat me so well, because I’m bringing them a toy.”

Black gets many of his clients through home design conventions. And sometimes the calls come a little more indirectly.

Black used to market his work at the Orange County Swap Meet, and in 1993, an employee of Johnny Carson’s former sidekick, Ed McMahon, picked up a brochure.

When McMahon’s wife, Pam, called, Black said, “She said she’d like to surprise her husband, and I had no idea then that she was Ed McMahon’s wife.”

Black also has installed custom tracks for Vince Neil of the rock group Motley Crue, TV weatherman Christopher Nance, and businesses such as Time Bomb Records, a handful of Ruby’s Restaurants (Corona del Mar, San Juan Capistrano and Mission Viejo Mall), McDonald’s, Lego World, a Ghirardelli shop, and a children’s dental office.

Black, who has two sons, Kevin and Kelly, and has been married to his wife, Helen, for 43 years, says he moves more than a dozen of the train tracks per year because the owners won’t leave their train behind. He has kept the simple track in his own home the same, however.

“The appeal of trains is that there is always a memory around a toy train,” he said. “We all have a love for them in our heart.”