Enjoying Christmas trains can be a lifelong experience

By Jim Bridges / Signals feature writer

Model railroading gets into your blood like any other hobby.

In the November issue of Signals we featured three Lake Tansi Village residents who are members of the Crossville Model Railroaders Club (CMRC). For the second part of the article, I visited the other four, Dick Carmack, Gary Laura, Dick Coxon and Mike Ferry. As is the case with a lot of model railroaders, they all received Lionel trains for Christmas when they were young.

Dick Carmack's interest in model trains began with an O gauge Lionel freight he got for Christmas in 1938. When he and wife, Lois, moved to Bristol, IL in 1972, he became interested in HO gauge because of its smaller size. He built his layout in pieces and when they moved he had to practically tear it apart. Since then it has been set up and disassembled a total of five times. When they moved to Lake Tansi Village, that was enough of tearing down and reassembling. He built his layout in four-foot modules. The shape of his layout is what modelers call dog bone L-shape.

Upon entering the room I first noticed the painted background of sky with white fluffy clouds. The layout features a '50s look of no particular town. There is a mining area with three spur tracks, a working gristmill with a water wheel, playground, grain storage bins, canning company and a business district. Two main lines run around the perimeter. He makes his trees and shrubs as well as buildings, some of which are from kits.

Dick has been retired for 12 years. He worked as materials claims manager for Lyon Metal Products, in Bristol, IL. They moved to Lake Tansi in 1997.

Gary Laura also became interested in model railroading as a young boy when he received a Lionel train for Christmas. After he married and had children, he let them play with the train. Unfortunately, it was damaged. When Gary went looking for original replacement parts to make repairs, he found what he needed and also a lot of other pieces of equipment. This rejuvenated his interest in trains that, in turn, led him to specialize in Lionel equipment. In the meantime, his wife, Eileen, started collecting Dept. 56 buildings. They decided the trains and buildings could coexist, so Gary created an L-shaped layout with a main line running around the perimeter and around the buildings. Eileen is in charge of the village. You know how serious it is because they built a room especially for the layout.

He is involved with the Lionel group in the club and they run "Thomas the Tank Engine" for all ages of children who visit the model train exhibit at the Outlet Mall.

Gary and Eileen formerly lived in Hartland, MI where he was employed by General Motors. He retired in 2002 after 35 years with the company. One of the things he enjoys most about retirement is being able to sleep in. You see, all those years he worked he was awakened at 3 a.m. by the sound of his alarm.

Dick Coxon had a most unusual introduction to trains. His grandfather was a retired B&O; (Baltimore and Ohio) engineer who piloted the huge engines. His father often worked as a fireman on them. With his father's approval, his grandfather talked with a fellow engineer who agreed to allow Dick to release the brake and to drive the engine out of a siding. "Wow, was that exciting for a 12-year-old boy," was how Dick describes the experience.

Now how does a man who had the experience of a lifetime as a boy get interested in model trains? He credits his wife Nancy for this. A neighbor in Florida was selling some of his equipment and Dick bought a few items. Later she spotted an ad in the local newspaper where someone was selling all of his G gauge equipment. He went over to see what he had and the rest is history. (I am so fascinated by his story of driving the engine I almost forgot to mention that he, too, received a Lionel train for Christmas.)

In an earlier article I explained the different gauges of model railroads with HO being the smallest and G being the largest. If you had been at the controls of a behemoth railroad engine, even for just a few minutes, would you settle for anything less than the largest gauge model available? Just what I thought, and that's what Dick thought, too. He has several engines and a number of pieces of rolling stock that he sets up on the deck when grandchildren visit. He enjoys taking equipment out to the mall and running it on the Crossville Model Railroaders Club (CMRC) layout. He performs maintenance on his equipment, has changed lights and once changed the smoke unit from one engine to another.

Dick was an educator and spent 35 years teaching industrial arts courses, 10 years in junior high and 25 years at the high school level. They retired to Lake Tansi in 1990.

Ask members of CMRC and they will tell you without hesitation that Mike Ferry is "Mr. Model Railroader." Besides his own layout, he, like other club members, is deeply involved with the CMRC layouts at the mall. He is president of CMRC and is one of two members who are board members of the southeastern region of National Model Railroaders of America. If it weren't for golf and "honey-do" projects, he would probably spend a majority of his waking hours with his model trains. He can name and give statistics on steam and diesel engines that have been copied in model form as well as rolling stock (freight and passengers cars).

Mike's layout is for HO gauge. The upper part is point-to-point from Nevada, MO to Ft. Scott, KS. It includes the Mendon Mines outside Ft. Scott. The lower part of the layout is modeled after an area in southwest Missouri, on the outer edges of Smelter Hill. Included is a small community with business and residential buildings and grain elevators. There are two main lines and an eight-track switching yard. He is building a diesel-engine service building from scratch. He hopes to install a digital command center (DCC) that will allow him to run more than one train on the same track, run one train forward and another backward.

He does his own loads for flat cars and open cars. Drinking straws become steel rods and metal pipe; sawdust is used to fill pulpwood cars; and real coal is used for coal hoppers. Rolling stock comes in kits with original NMRA hook horn couplers. To meet NMRA standards he changes trucks and couplers to scale. Mike is working on a "Master Modeler" in NMRA. He has completed two of eight sections. Included in the requirements are scenery, electrical and construction. His work has been associated with freight cars in lumber and pulpwood loads. He has built 12 cars from scratch and also one engine. To be certified as a Master Modeler all work must be documented. One thing I noticed during the interviews was that engines and rolling stock had authentic railroad name logos and numbers just like the real ones. When I asked him about this, he told me there are historical Web sites that have information that can be downloaded to use as a guide in painting rolling stock and engines.

Mike found a Lionel freight train under the Christmas tree in 1947. It was an O scale engine. "Lionel built only one O scale model," he said. "The rest were O gauge, smaller than the first one." He stayed in contact with model trains and in 1978 built a table for a Lionel train. He took down the table and while in Albany, GA, changed to HO and rebuilt the layout.

Mike and Joyce moved to Lake Tansi in 2001. He had 23 years with McGregor Golf but retired in 2004 from Dura Automotive where he was plant controller.

For the previous article, Mike graciously offered to drive me to the homes of Lou LaForce, Joe Rummel and Tom White where I interviewed them and made pictures. He also drove me to the homes of Dick Carmack, Gary Laura, Dick Coxon and finally to his house for interviews and pictures for this article. I deeply appreciate his help. Working on these articles has been very enjoyable. I may look through some boxes in the attic and see if I can find an engine, some cars and a few sections of track. If I succeed, I know several men who would be eager to help me get it up and running.

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