TOPSHAM

Model trains of all sizes powered down tracks and through tunnels during the Great Falls Model Railroad Club’s fall model train show Saturday at Mt. Ararat High School.

Club member Travis Johnson of Oxford kept a close eye on his train from behind the 3-D scenery and landscape that was part of GFMRC’s layout. He said his model train, the Great Falls Railroad, isn’t an existing railroad in Maine. Rather, it is purely from the imagination of the Great Falls Railroad Club in Auburn.

Johnson has been into model trains since he was 14 or 15 years old; his parents bought him some old scale train catalogs, “and I started dreaming,” he said.

Mix in some model train items in his basement, and the hobby began in earnest.

He joined the club about 10 years ago.

Johnson works with natural gas for a living at ETTI and model trains is a way for him to relax.

“When I first start working on them, I’ve got to get rid of everything else in my mind,” he said. “I’ve got to focus on what I’m working on.”

Working on model trains allows him to think about things a different way and provides a new perspective.

“I do a lot of painting of locomotives and I do track work, electrical, but I don’t do scenery,” Johnson said.

He prefers to do the electrical work on locomotives, installing lights and the computer chips that run the trains. Johnson has rebuilt the computer interface that allows them to operate the model trains on the portable modules set up in the school’s gym. The controls are equipped with antennas so he can walk around untethered.

The Great Falls Model Railroad Club works with HO scale model trains, but there are many different sizes of model trains. The club, established 30 years ago, has its own clubhouse in Auburn and, Johnson said, the second largest railroad library in the state.

Paul Lodge, the club’s secretary and a past president, said the GFMRC is designated as a nonprofit educational foundation. In addition to the shows, the club teaches model railroading as a class, brings students into the club and teaches model railroading as a merit badge for Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts. It also teaches about railroad safety through Operation Lifesaver.

Model railroading is more than running trains, Lodge said. It also involves building scenery and train history. Some people are “rivet counters” and not only replicate railroads but are insistent on building an exact, to scale, historically correct replica.

For those who engage in model railroading, it takes great creative skills.

One challenge of the club is to bring in new young members. Two of its youngest members were at the show Saturday. Daniel Malkowski, 17, of Waterville, and Bryce Weeks, 16, of West Gardiner, are best friends. Either can give you a full history on trains.

Malkowski’s grandmother got him a Thomas the Tank engine when he was two, and his love for trains evolved from there. Ever since he’s been fascinated by how trains work, “and really just going all into it.” He joined the club three years ago. He hopes to one day work on one of the big railroads, either in Maine or down south.

When Weeks was four, his grandfather took him to the Wiscasset, Waterville and Farmington Railway in Alna where both boys are now brakemen. A couple years later his grandfather gave him his first Thomas the Tank train.

He joined the GFMRC in 2009 and became interested in modeling two years later. He’s met friends through the club who work for railways that will help him find a job after high school, perhaps working in one of the locomotive shops.

Weeks said he is amazed that a locomotive, something so small, can move so much.

For Malkowski, it’s the history that draws him. He’s not a big fan of new technology entering the world of railroads and trains, and prefers the steam locomotives from the pre-diesel era.

“Just to sit there and watch the pistons go around, the smoke coming out of the stack, hearing the whistle — it’s just an experience to behold,” he said.

“They built America,” Weeks added. “Even today, trains are still building America.”