Once I built a railroad

Most people either “get� model railroading or they don’t. Trains were the belching monsters of my childhood, right up there with dinosaurs and school teachers. There is not quite the same fascination for trains since the death of the steam engine. Today’s kids are more interested in trucks and airplanes.

Model railroading is, to a large degree, a trap. It looks easy. You can buy that little set and you have everything you need... for about 10 minutes. Then you want more. If only you had another 6 feet of space and one more locomotive. It is a lot like stone soup. You start out very basic and end up unbelievably complicated. And it never ends. You are never done.

Much of your time is spent in getting things to work smoothly. Since you are on your own (there is usually nobody else as crazy as you are in the same town), you have to be your own carpenter, electrician, scenery specialist, painter, sculptor, solderer, track layer and equipment repairman. Nobody is good at all of these, so there is always something that just isn’t quite up to snuff.

And don’t look for sympathy or admiration. Your significant other or best friend could care less about those authentic air brake hose couplings on your Pullman cars or the operating valve gear on your Berkshire locomotive. What they want to know is, where is the log dumping car and how do you blow the whistle?

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There are two basic categories of model railroader: the control freak and the miniaturization maniac. I am a control freak guy, so I work on a smaller scale, which allows me to put more track on the table and more industries for the trains to serve. I can also fake a lot of stuff because it is so small that you can’t really tell that I didn’t paint the engineer’s eyeballs blue. Most of the scenery can be done quickly, much of it being ready to drop into place, especially the buildings. Basically, I am running my own little world, and like the Roman Centurion in the Bible, when I say come they cometh and when I say go they goeth. At least that’s the theory.

My setup is about delivering freight and picking up empties, moving special trains through and working in the passenger service. At the end of a day of playing with my trains, er, that is, “operations,â€� I am as tired as if I had just put in a real workday on a real railroad. The difference is I did not get paid.  

What an idiot.

Bill Abrams is a resident of Pine Plains.