It’s a sunny afternoon in Delmar, and I’m standing in a busy rail yard, waiting on a train.
It’s a good thing I didn’t bring any luggage, though. This train is really small. It’s a HO scale model, so instead of the locomotive being 60 feet or so long, it’s about eight or nine inches.
It’s one of hundreds of locomotives, tanker cars, boxcars, cabooses, and the like operated by the DelMarVa Model Railroad Club, and I’m here to get a preview of the club’s annual open house, which started earlier this month and runs into the new year.
My conductors on this journey are Jeff Shockley and Bill Deeter, two guys who love trains. So, I’m in good company. Jeff, a friendly guy with an infectious laugh, tells me about how he got involved in the club.
“January of 2003, I came up for an open house, stayed all day, and when I walked out, I was a member," he says. "I'm on the board of directors. I handle the White Elephant Table, and I also do the monthly newsletter.”
If your history with model trains involves a small circular track around your Christmas tree, or maybe a small table in the basement as a kid, you’re in for a surprise. This layout is enormous.
The HO scale layout, the club’s largest, covers 2,700 square feet. And that’s not counting the other sizes - N scale, O scale, etc. And, this layout is based on real-life geography from the nation’s industrial heartland.
“This is the Ohio River right here. On the other side of the mountain, that's Grafton, West Virginia, and you wind around, and it ends up on the other side, which is Cincinnati, Ohio. Over here is Parkersburg Yard, Parkersburg, West Virginia, and Chillicothe is under that white shelf over there," Shockley explains.
This layout has been growing for decades, with new track, new trains, and new towns being added over the years. Bill Deeter tells me it wasn’t easy at first, before the internet.
“When we first started, there wasn't much," he says. "35 years ago, give or take, when we started working on that very first section over there and trying to figure out where it fit in the real world, it was really tricky because we were just looking at an atlas, a railroad atlas, and going to the library.”
Now, in the internet age it’s a lot easier.
“It makes research tremendously easier. And there's a lot of Facebook groups that concern this area," Deeter says. "There's a ton of modelers and all the different information is now vastly available.”
Another thing to know about this setup - it’s complicated, much like a full-sized rail system. In fact, there’s a central control tower with a view of the layout and software similar to what you might find in a railroad control center. The locomotives are connected to the control tower via the internet.
“It's got an access point inside each of the locomotives," Deeter explains. "Basically, it has a number. You can program the number in it, and then you have throttles that can dial up just that number."
"At open house, we try to get 4 trains on each main line," Shockley adds.
But maybe the most striking thing is the level of detail. The terrain, the world-building, the cars, and people, and farms, and factories that add up to a diorama of industrial America in the 1970s. Shockley shows me a drive-in movie.
"During open house, a guy will bring in his iPad and slide it in the screen," he says. "The first two open houses we played Polar Express because it was Christmas.”
There’s also a tribute to my colleagues in the media.
“For a couple years, a guy named Tyler Butler, he used to work for WBOC, was a member," Shockley explains. "He created a scene over here that is a satellite, CNN satellite, and the guy with the microphone.”
And, of course, there's a tribute to one of the First State’s industrial titans.
“Upper level, we have our DuPont plant," Shockley points out.
"Well, not yet, we don't," Deeter clarifies. It's a work in progress, but coming soon.
The trains are the stars of the show, as they should be. But the cars, the buildings, even the coal mines and slag heaps - they’re the supporting cast in a story about an America that once was. An imperfect America, to be sure, but also a thriving, bustling, industrial nation where then, as now, our raw materials, our finished goods, and sometimes ourselves rode the steel rails behind steel giants.
The DelMarVa Model Railroad Club holds open houses on the first and second weekends of January. Hours are 11:00 - 4:00 on Saturdays and 12:00 - 4:00 on Sunday. More information is on their website.
