By ALISON HAIN
Model trains, like good theater, are designed and operated by a skilled director.
They are a demanding hobby, one that requires familiarity and knowledge of railroading vocabulary, scales, gauges, rolling stock and mechanical, electrical and electronic basics. Add to these imperative extras such as knowledge of planning and design, local history, geography and economics, and the stage is set for successful railroading.
Estimates of model railroaders in Clinton, Essex and nearby counties number between 1,500 and 2,000.
"For some," said hobbyist Jim Van Hoven of Essex, "model trains bring model railroad hobbyists back to their childhood. They enable you to create a fantasy world or a real world. That's your decision. Their creation and operation bring significant challenges but also much pleasure."
FIRST A TOY
For Van Hoven, like many, model railroads were first a toy — but over time, he began to see them not only as a thoughtful science but also an art.
"I was introduced to them at Christmastime, then I had friends who had them," Van Hoven said. "We created our own stories, our own productions. We used a combination of steam and diesel engines which were common and historically accurate in the 1950s."
Model-railroading scales — the proportion between the railroad model and its prototype — help define the size of model displays and their equipment, rolling stock and tracks. Van Hoven's railroad display is an N scale, "definitely not for little kids," he said. "It is too small and too fragile."
Rick Rockefeller, a model railroader in Westport, began working with Lionel trains at age 8.
His older brother led the way.
"Model railroads fascinated me," Rockefeller said. "They had a kind of mystique.
"But as college approached, we made a fatal mistake. We didn't have time for railroading. We decided to sell everything."
But the mystique never died.
"The thoughts of youth are long, long thoughts," as the poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote.
Rockefeller returned to the hobby when he retired in 2007.
"I had the time again," he said. "Now one third of my basement is devoted to (model trains)."
Now, though, he works in HO scale, larger than N scale but smaller than the Lionel trains of his childhood.
"It doesn't matter what scale you choose," he said. "You choose the one you want."
This time, Rockefeller found much of what he needed for his layout on eBay. For his design, he relied on his knowledge of Adirondack history, topography and geology.
His interest in the Adirondacks developed as a seasonal resident at a summer camp near Mount Arab outside of Tupper Lake. After retirement, he made his permanent home in Westport.
RAILROADS REVIVED
Rockefeller began with benchwork to support his display. He moved on to the more creative aspects, such as planning, design and layout of his model railroad. He determined the historical and geographic setting and the all-important economic reasons to support his villages and track layout.
He employed electronics such as a Digital Command Control and a controller called a Cab. These investments allow more operating flexibility and can even control more than one train on a track and add engine sounds.
Adirondack topography offers significant challenges to the railroader, he said.
One of those was re-creating the original trestle above a gorge that had existed between the Beaver River and Big Moose. With artistic license, Rockefeller added a fire tower based on a model of the Mount Arab tower near Tupper Lake.
For many years the economic mainstay of the Adirondacks was lumbering. Rockefeller's display includes the former lumber mill town of Conifer in St. Lawrence County, featuring the Emporium Forestry Company. That firm opened a mill in the late 1800s and built its own railroad, the Grasse River Railroad.
That railroad eventually ran as far as Cranberry Lake to service further lumbering operations. Rockefeller included the mill, kiln, the old Conifer Inn and a row of company housing behind the inn, as well.
"I was lucky enough to see this mill in operation when I was a boy," he said.
The company town even had wooden sidewalks, he noted. The mill burned to the ground in 1957, and the current owner, Heywood-Wakefield, decided not to rebuild as it had other sources of lumber.
ARTISTIC LICENSE
Rockefeller also included an open-pit iron mine known as Benson Mines.
"Ultimately owned by the Jones and Loughlin Steel Company, the mine closed in the 1960s," he said.
His miniature panorama of Adirondack railroading also has a classification yard, where outgoing trains are made up of cars brought there by incoming trains.
His layout on this particular day includes two groups of coal hoppers that have come in from the Benson Mines to be taken to their ultimate destination.
Because everything had to be compressed for the train layout, Rockefeller said, he placed Conifer just beyond the classification yard.
Van Hoven's display is also set in the Adirondacks, its compact design and construction amalgamating mining operations, a basic industrial operation and a village. In the distance, across Lake Champlain, is Camels Hump Mountain in Vermont.
"I used some artistic license in designing this setting," he said.
A well-tended model train setup is always growing — spurs and turnouts to the main line, the addition of more realistic scenery and residential and commercial architecture.
"You can go as far as you want to go with model trains," Rockefeller said. "The ideal is to run your railroad the way a real railroad runs."
