Ho, Ho, HO Gauge

SUN CITY – No mode of transportation has fascinated modern man as much as trains.

Trains…trains…trains. They transformed the wild west into the noisy west. They spawned songs, musicals, poems, and story after story. The Santa Fe, Canadian Pacific, Southern Pacific, Milwaukee Road, and Chattanooga Choo Choo became household names, and some folks made sure they rode on all of them in their lifetime. Dozens of Hollywood movie plots included trains, and Agatha Christie’s ride on the Orient Express is one of the all-time great films.

Trains have fascinated guys so much that model train sales once were one of the largest parts of the toy industry. Getting a train set for Christmas was a boy’s biggest thrill, and having a train city with miniature buildings, bridges, trestles, and towns made a kid the most popular in the neighborhood.

In the last generation or two, the expansion of organized sports and the development of electronic gadgets and videos have changed some of this, but not all of it.

All of this leads us today to Sun City, where the model train culture is not only alive and well, but thriving.

Sun City itself is certainly well-known, but the Kishwaukee Valley & Eakin Creek Model Railroad Club is arguably the most prominent and best known group in the community to outsiders. It is not one of the largest charter clubs here, but it has created some of the most extensive, creative, and fascinating model displays. The club’s activities have drawn the attention of national model railroad groups, been inspected by persons from all over the world, and have been the subject of newspaper stories throughout the state.

“When the National Garden Railroad Association had a convention in St. Charles a few years ago, two busloads of their members came up here to take a look at our outdoor garden display at the woodshop,” said John Knych, club spokesperson. “There were people from all over the nation, and even England and New Zealand, and they were very impressed by it.”

The club’s display was completed about six years ago in cooperation with the Sunflower Garden Club. The landscaped area, complete with flowers, shrubbery, numerous buildings, miniature ponds, rivers, and bridges, covers the yard on the west side of the wood shop, where the club also has created a large indoor display.

“The visitors strolled the grounds and basement, and camera clicks competed with train whistles and horns as hundreds of them viewed our layouts,” Knych said. “Many of them were amazed at the size and scope of our layouts as well as the creativity of the scenery and attention to detail. Of special note by many of them was the use of tree bark to hide the pylons that control the track elevations on the outdoor layout.”

The club’s best known display at Christmas, however, is the multi-layered “train town” made out of sawhorses, plywood, boxes, and painted foam. It is put up every Christmas next to the central fireplace in the Prairie Lodge. It draws large crowds of fascinated grandchildren, young people, and residents from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. each day starting right after Thanksgiving.

“We’re proud of our display; it is one of the few we know of in the Chicago area that includes four gauges [sizes] of trains, ranging from G to O to HO and N,” said Earl Maha, a retired professional electrician who is one of the main builders of the display. “Our displays cover almost the entire history of trains, from the Lionel trains we all had as kids to the modern and tiny HO gauges of today.”

It takes three days and nearly a dozen members to get the display out of storage and set it up, and three more days to take it down a few days after Christmas, Maha said.

“We start the process in late October, because it takes at least 30 days to clean it up, repair any breakage, and prepare everything for the Christmas season. We started by setting it up on unstable tables and soon shifted to the use of sawhorses and plywood panels to make it more stable.”

The multi-level display is about seven feet tall at its highest point and is about 40 feet long and 25 wide.

“Some of the trains on it belong to the club, and some are personally owned by members,” Maha said.

“We raise money primarily through an annual raffle where we give away equipment to donors,” said Pete Walton. “Maintaining our equipment and layouts is a growing concern. We recently found out that a transformer that suddenly went down is going to cost $800 to fix or replace. It is getting more and more expensive to keep our equipment up properly, and raising funds to pay the costs is getting more difficult.”

The Christmas display came about because, like all train enthusiasts, the Sun City model railroaders knew that layouts are synonymous with Christmas.

“It all started with a small circle of track around my Christmas tree back in 1999,” said Harry Leopold, who was one of the originators of the holiday display idea. He also has a large layout in his basement and is a charter member of the club.

If you’ve gone to sleep listening to the night-time Union Pacific freight whistles as the trains pass through town, you may understand why model railroaders do what they do.

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