Kalmbach Publishing Company, producers of an online source for rail-related information, where you can discover model trains, toy trains, garden trains and even real trains.

(Horn) The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturer's Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music Spencer: Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll visit a B&B, where you can not only play with trains, but sleep in a restored caboose.

We'll see what a retired NASA engineer does for relaxation, and we'll visit an exhibit that is billed as the most comprehensive display of toy trains in America.

Over the years on this program, we've taken you around the world to see some of the finest and most impressive real railroads ever built by man.

And, we've taken you from coast-to-coast to see the most unbelievable model railroad layouts you could ever imagine.

But, have you ever seen a railroad that was big enough to ride on, but not big enough to ride in?

To answer that riddle we take you to a rural country setting in western Michigan.

Ancr: Cedar Springs, Michigan looks as lovely as it sounds.

It is small town, middle America.

Beautiful country.

You'll see pretty much what you might expect to see.

What you wouldn't expect to see is one of the largest and most impressive 1:8 scale railroads in the world.

Often described as the type of railroad you can ride on, but not in, 1:8 scale is truly built for fun.

And, it's here, near Cedar Springs, where Russ and Mara Eldred built their White Creek Railroad.

Construction began more than a decade ago, just a few months after Russ retired from his job as a high school teacher.

He had always wanted to build something, anything, he could ride on.

But he wasn't sure what.

Russ Eldred: And I was in my teaching career, and after I retired I said, "Now's the time I can maybe do something."

I called a friend and I said, "Do you know of any trains that you can ride on?"

And he said, "No, but I'll call you back if I find out anything."

And he called me back a few minutes later and said, "Sure, there's a track down at Battle Creek, Michigan, that you can ride on."

So I went down the next day and looked around and watched, and got a ride and talked to some people, and talked with a guy that builds engines and said, "I'll get back with you in a few days."

And a few days later I called him and ordered an engine and ten thousand feet of rail.

I come home and started building the shop and started building the railroad.

The roadbed was laid out by me.

I walked through the woods with stakes and staked where I wanted the railroad to go.

And it took dozens of trips out there and staking various places and I finally decided where I wanted the railroad to go.

I hired in a bulldozer and say, "Clear a path."

Then we started laying track.

Dick Tomlinson: Back in 1994, Bill Hayes, who's associated with a railroad over on the east side of Michigan told me that there was a fellow that had a trailer park that was putting in a railroad.

And he was supposed to have two miles of tack that he'd put down in 11 months time.

Now all of us know you can't put track down that fast, it can't be done.

So Bill Hayes, myself and my neighbor came over to prove this guy a liar.

We got over here to the White Creek Railroad.

Sure enough, he had two miles of track down.

Russ Eldred: When I originally started, I figured it was gonna be a half a mile loop around the pond and that was going to be it.

And then after the half a mile, well, "I'd like to go here."

So I added a little bit more and so the first year we added a mile or two total.

And then it's been sort of a mile every year there after.

Until last year.

We're done laying track now.

Ancr: If it looks like it goes on forever, it's because it does.

The White Creek Railroad consists of over five miles of mainline track laid out over one-hundred acres of land.

It's land on which the Eldred's also operate sites for manufactured housing.

The train winds through densely wooded hills and open fields.

It meanders across marshy lowlands and past two picturesque lakes.

There are hundreds of switches, and a half-dozen trestles ranging in length from sixty feet to more than three-hundred feet.

Russ Eldred: It's a fantastic piece of property for what we're doing with it because of the variety of the layout.

The water and the woods and the hills and the grasslands.

We bought the property mainly for the business, the manufactured housing community, that's the primary purpose of the business and the railroad just happened to come long.

Ancr: This is a work in progress, and it took lots of people, putting in lots of hours.

Bob Withorn: How did I get dragged into this.

A friend of mine.

I've been in model railroading for many many years.

My uncle used to work for the railroad so I've always had a fondness for the stuff.

A friend who had been involved with this stuff on the other side of the state said, "I've got something you need to see."

I said, "OK, fine, whatever."

He says, "Let me see if I can get you invited."

So he brought me up here and I went, " Laugh This is pretty neat."

Which, by the end of the day I walked up to Russ and said, "Like I live over here.

Do you need some help on Saturdays, because I can come up most Saturdays."

He says, "That'd be a change."

So I'm here.

I come up here pretty much every Saturday year round and we're up here anywhere from, maybe the least is four hours on a Saturday, as much as eight or ten.

So you figure over the last four or five years, it adds up to a pretty good chunk of time.

Ancr: The seven-and-a-half inch gauge track supports some awfully big pieces of machinery.

The locomotives are about sixteen inches wide and vary in length from about three to ten feet.

The rolling stock, and there's a lot of it, is approximately five feet long, a foot-and-a-half wide, and a foot-and-a-half high.

Each one weighs anywhere from one-hundred to two-hundred-and-fifty pounds.

Russ Eldred: Engines can be bought ready made from a variety of manufacturers in the United States.

Same thing with cars, the rolling stock they call it.

Or you can buy them as kits, or kits with all the holes drilled in them, or you can just buy a pile of steel and start building your own.

Bob Withorn: I like working with my hands, I like fabricating stuff.

It's just an opportunity to come up and bolt things together.

And when you're done you look back on it, you say, "Wow, that's pretty neat what I've done."

So whether it's putting down track or building a box car or one of the locomotives that we build here, it's just we have a good time doing this.

It's the cameraderie amongst the guys, but it's other things too.

We know a lot about railroads, so we come up and chit chat.

It's the fun of getting out the welders and cutting torches and cutting metal and start welding something together and when you get done it almost looks like something it should.

Ancr: The White Creek Railroad is an operational railroad, meaning that it hosts an average of ten to twenty trains switching rolling stock at the same time.

People come from far and wide, not just to look, but to work this railroad.

Bob Withorne: Well, you actually feel like you're on a full size train, because you're riding in the trains when you're going around the railroad.

It's really better than the full size, because the full size you don't really get the view that you do on these because you have the massive engine in front of you that you can't see around to well.

Joe Scales: I came up from Ridgeway, Virginia, some 800 miles from here.

Come up every, at least twice a year, sometimes three times a year, to play with the trains, meet with the guys.

You think about it, we're one big happy family.

If somebody's got a problem, if I've got a problem with something on the engine, nobody's happy here until I'm fixed and able to go out on the railroad and run.

So it's just a great hobby for everybody.

Bob Withorn: Oh, I'd say each state has anywhere from ten to fifteen to twenty, inch and half railroads.

Most people don't even know they exist.

They're on private property generally, and unless you know someone whose been there, you don't find out about it.

The railroads are unique in that they're not a tourist attraction.

They're really not open to the public because of liability problems, and we're not geared to haul the public.

That's why most people that have them don't let people know that they're there.

Mara Eldred: I enjoy coming home from work and taking a ride on the railroad.

It's very peaceful and quiet, and relaxing.

Russ Eldred: It's very enjoyable to have people come and visit and enjoy the railroad with us and enjoy the scenery.

And it's - how do I say it - it's boring when nobody's here.

Ancr: For Russ and Mara Eldred, the White Creek Railroad is more than just a hobby.

They have invested countless hours into something now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.

For the Eldred's, it has been worth every hour, and every penny.

Spencer: Rus said that his retirement has been so busy, that he can't believe he had time to go to work.

What does a retired NASA engineer do in his spare time?

For Lou Ullian, it is creating a world far, far away from the void of space.

It's a world filled with trains and trees.

Ancr: It's a beautiful sunny day here in Merritt Island, Florida.

For some, it's the place to get a fantastic view of shuttles taking off from the Kennedy Space Center nearby.

For others, it's a place to spot rare birds taking off for their yearly migration.

It's certainly a nature-lovers' paradise.

With such an abundance of tropical foliage in the area, it's a little bit surprising to see what's inside this house.

When you step into Lou Ullian's train room, you enter an entirely different ecosystem.

You're instantly transported into the world of Pacific Northwestern logging in 1925.

It's just about as far from Florida as you can get without leaving the continental United States.

Set in Oregon's Cascade Mountains, Lou's Coon Creek Lumber Company layout is a narrow gauge logging railroad in On3.

Lou has always been intrigued with the logging industry's geared engines.

Ullian: I saw a picture of a Shay geared locomotive and it intrigued me.

Off side boiler, gears, vertical boilers, Shay.

I got interested in geared engines.

Geared engines are used in the woods.

So from that I got interested in logging.

And logging took place out in Oregon, Washington, and California.

Even though it's Florida, I enjoyed the logging.

Ancr: Lou used both standard and narrow gauge track so people could see the difference between them.

Lou has worked with several modeling friends over the years to complete the layout.

The backgrounds include photographs of the Rocky Mountains taken both by Lou and his friend Mike Brock.

Mike and Lou have been friends for almost 30 years and they've helped each other on their layouts.

It was Mike who came up with the idea to make the layout viewable from several angles, just like the way prototype trains are.

From the railroad's base in the small town of Stillwater, a single narrow gauge track zigzags up the steep grades into the mountains.

Halfway up, there's a yard where the lumber company's Shays and Climaxes carry loaded log cars to the mill.

A mountain layout wouldn't be realistic without plenty of bridges, and this one is no exception.

There's a low timber trestle, a big timber trestle and several cribbed log bridges.

The largest trestle - at 6-foot high/3-foot long - would be 150 feet tall and 600 feet long.

Built by Ted Norcross, more than 3,000 Grandt Line nut-bolt washer castings were used in this trestle alone.

The Coon Creek sawmill is modeled after a real mill and took Lou's friend Mark Hankins over four years to complete.

Although he works on the layout almost every day, running it has never been a top priority for Lou.

What really excites him is the scenery, especially the trees.

And the trees are everywhere.

They are by far the most labor-intensive part of this layout.

Some of them tower above the trains, and would be over 200 feet tall in real life.

Lou makes them by tapering a piece of balsa wood with a wood rasp.

He then stains them and drills holes for English sea fern from tree kits.

One particular tree here is called the "Spar" tree, which is a very large tree used by the logging industry as a type of crane.

Rigged as a "haystack boom loader," to load logs onto cars, the Spar tree is 100 scale feet tall.

While Lou is referred to as the "tree guy," Mike is called the "dirt guy".

For the sake of realism Mike actually brought some dirt in from Wyoming and North Carolina.

The layout's realism is stunning: from the color of the soil to the smallest tree branches, this layout is a tribute to logging railroads.

The Coon Creek Lumber Company layout's realism doesn't stop with the way it looks.

Lou has also added recorded sounds to enhance the overall experience.

While all of the On3 locomotives are equipped with sound systems, Lou also has his own recordings of geared locomotive noises.

Speakers and tape recorders are tucked under the layout where Lou can operate them.

When you leave Lou's trainroom you leave an entire world.

Upon returning to the sounds of palm trees rustling in the breeze and bright light of the Florida sun, you can't help but wonder if there's a "tree guy" somewhere up in the Pacific Northwest who just can't get enough palm trees into his layout.

Spencer: Lou was responsible for range safety, and had met and worked with all of the astronauts.

In a moment, we'll take a liesurely break at the Double K Ranch, where yo can sleep in a restored caboose and then take your own garden scale cars for a ride amidst the cactus and desert critters.

First, though, we're going to Sacramento, and visit "Small Wonders, the Magic of Toy Trains."

This exhibit features some one thousand vintage toy trains, six interactive displays, and a thirty three hundred square foot layout.

Ancr: Marklin.

Bing.

Ives.

American Flyer.

Lionel.

These are the names of legendary manufacturers of toy trains during the first half of the twentieth century.

And thanks to the passion of one man, these wonders of decades past are now on display for all to see.

Entitled "Small Wonders," this exhibit of the Thomas W. Sefton collection is one of the crown jewels of the California State Railroad Museum in Sacramento.

Paul: This collection is considered one of the best in America.

Mr. Sefton didn't just collect toy trains, he collected the best examples of toy trains, and he specifically focused on the Lionel classic era, so he's got one of the top notch collections in America.

The exhibit was set up to really get visitors sort of into the feel of the toys.

So as you go through the exhibit you actually walk within a toy train station next to a Lionel City train station.

So there's an element of whimsy as you go though.

We also wanted it to wow guests because toy trains are colorful.

they're fun and we think we've achieved all those things.

Ancr: A gift from Thomas Sefton, a San Diego banker, the collection represents decades of endeavor by one of this nation's most persistent and savvy collectors.

Paul: A couple of highlights in the collection that I would mention are the Blue Comet train set and then the Transcontinental Ltd. Those were personal favorites of Mr. Sefton's.

He spent a long time trying to find the entire set in mint condition and in this exhibit we actually use that to compare against, because those are Lionel's finest toy trains.

We compare those against Europe's finest toy trains.

Ancr: The "Small Wonders" exhibit takes up about 3300 square feet and is organized into six distinct areas.

Paul: In the Exhibit Introduction, that's your first greeting visually to this exhibit so there's a large vintage graphic and then a very large toy train set coming out of what looks like a giant sized box.

In Collector's Attic we explore who Thomas Sefton was, what all he collected and also take you down a pathway to explain everyone collects something, and we help people understand that.

Toy Trains 101 might be alternately described as the toy train timeline.

We sort of explain how toy trains started before electricity, that basically they were push, pull and windup sort of devices.

Electricity really changed all that, and / of course, the classic era of toy trains are all about electricity.

In Lionel City we take on a look at Lionel itself.

Lionel became the greatest toy train manufacturer not entirely by accident.

They were a great marketer and they understood that electricity was a force that was going to stay.

Some of my favorites in the Lionel City area are actually the oddball items.

Lionel dabbled into toy boats as well as toy racing cars.

There's also another favorite in one of the other areas that goes down the same pathway.

Lionel did a little oven and stove for girls when it was trying to diversify its product line.

The Operating Layout is the part of this exhibit that guests spend the most time at, particularly if they're younger.

We set it up to model what a toy train layout might have looked like if you had a wealthy family in the 1920s, at the height of the toy train era.

Scenery techniques were not well developed.

You tended to compress everything and we've got probably more Lionel accessories than anybody ever owned at one time.

But it's a dazzling layout.

Four different tracks operating on four different levels.

Toy Trains For Everyone makes the leap from post WWII to the present.

The toy train era has really morphed into scale modeling as the main part of the hobby today.

Manufacturing techniques changed.

They really improved so manufacturers could make a better model and the industry moved from just being boys and toys to it being an adult hobby.

My favorite part is actually right here behind me, connecting the whole idea of collecting to a real person who had a real vision and who then turned over this vision to the public to enjoy.

Ancr: The more than 350 thousand annual visitors who view this unique exhibit have every reason to be extremely grateful for the sharp eyed passion of Mr. Thomas Sefton.

Music Ancr: "Bring your own train.or use ours!"

That's what Ken and Mary Karrels tell guests of their Bed & Breakfast, the Double K Ranch in Tucson, Arizona.

The ranch is more than a place to hang your hat after a long day of touring the sites of the Southwest.

It's also a place where you can let your G scale trains roam over 1,000 feet of track that wind through the ranch's backyard.

It's one big playground.

And it all started with a circle.

Mary: The layout started in 1995 with one circle going around our little pond in the backyard.

And that worked fine.

And then there was another circle.

And pretty soon it's a loop that went out around the mesquite tree and a saguaro and back to the original circle.

That was the beginning.

It never stopped.

Ancr: Mary, who's also an artist, has always been an avid gardener and she thought the garden railroad offered opportunities to do more creative kinds of gardening.

On the other hand, Ken seems to have railroading in his blood.

Both his father and grandfather worked for the Illinois Central Railroad.

A psychologist by profession, Ken enjoys seeing his guests unwind during their stay at the ranch.

Ken: I've had someone say, at least more than once, "My blood pressure actually is going down.

I can feel it just by sitting over here listening to the birds, listening, looking out here, the mountains, the cactus."

So leaving here with the experience that hey, this is something different and I feel rejuvenated, I've recreated, I've re-created.

Ancr: The railroad has been a family affair for the Karrels.

Ken's 86-year-old father, Vernon, has handcrafted many of the buildings along the route, including a saloon, a hotel, and a red barn.

Many of the scenes depict happy moments from Mary and Ken's childhoods.

Mary grew up in Wisconsin, so she enjoys the circus train depicted in Baraboo as well as Level Acres, a farm she spent time on as a child.

The Karrels often wake up to find various buildings and set pieces either moved around or completely gone.

In the Southwest, it can be a challenge to keep critters out of your layout.

Mary: One never know's what's going to be moved or when.

We'll wake up in the morning and find that a little cow is missing or a little person has been moved from here to there.

We're not sure who's doing it, but some little critters come in at night and rearrange things.

Ancr: The Karrels also raise champion Weimaraners who have figured out ways to navigate themselves around the trains.

When you're tired of playing with the railroad, but still want to be surrounded by it, you can get a good night's rest in the Karrel's restored Southern Pacific caboose.

The caboose features all the comforts of a luxury hotel suite.with a train theme, of course.

The Karrels are so pleased with the way the restoration worked out that they occasionally stay in the caboose as a their own private getaway.even though it's only 30 feet away from their home.

But their guests have come from all over the world.

Ken: The range, as far as geography would be all the way from South America, South Africa, Europe.

Ancr: World-weary guests can also take comfort by staying in the Depot Room which offers gorgeous Southwestern views.and its own fanciful model railroad.

Ken and Mary find garden railroading to be a wonderful creative outlet that they can enjoy as a couple.

Ken: I think it's the most creative because it's something we both can do.

We can both use our skills and talents.

Something that the garden railroad, I think is unique, because it's not just us, but many families not only here locally.

We have about 80, approximately 80 families in our Tucson chapter, but also throughout the country.

You'll find that combination seems to work.

Mary: We love having garden railroaders come.

They are happy campers.

Some of them bring their own trains and if they don't, of course, they can play with the trains here.

But garden railroaders are a terrific group of people, we really enjoy having them.

Ken: And that's what's so unique about this.

One of our guests who came from across the pond as I like to say, he said, "We're not really strangers, we're just friends who haven't met."

(laughs) I thought that was really putting it very succinctly and that's the kind of experiences we've had.

People will come here from different countries, and then I'll get a postcard, we'll get a telephone call saying, "We're back at Heathrow, and we've arrived and we just want to let you know."

So that's rather unique I think.

That's the psychic reward in why we do this.

Spencer: That's it for this episode.

Be sure to join us next time for more, Tracks Ahead.

Music Ancr: Tracks Ahead.

Brought to you by Kalmbach Publishing Company, bringing you Model Railroader magazine every month for over 70 years.

And Garden Railways magazine, helping you take the fun of model trains outdoors.

Walthers, manufacturer and supplier of model railroading products; serving the hobby since 1932.

The Model Railroad Division of the Hobby Manufacturers Association.

Helping hobbyists design and build their own miniature railroad empires inside or outside, big or small.

(Whistle) Music