Steam Whistle Music Tracks Ahead Brought to you by: Rancho de Tia Rosa, three unique Mexican restaurants serving culinary delights since 1990.

Music Hi, I'm Spencer Christian.

On this episode of Tracks Ahead, we'll take a ride on the longest rail line on the planet, visit an Arizona man who has built a tribute to his native New York, go to Cincinnati and visit a museum that is a testament to a childhood dream, and meet a man who never met a model train gauge he didn't like.

Mention the Trans Siberian Railroad, and you'll get an image of snow, Dr. Zhivalgo, and perhaps hear Laura's Theme.

The line is the longest rail line in the world, crossing eight time zones as it makes it's way from the Pacific Ocean to eastern Europe.

Let's take a ride on the Golden Eagle Express.

Annc: The Trans-Siberian Railroad.

Running for over 6,000 miles and covering 8 time zones, this line of steel connects the glittering capitol of Moscow, with the far eastern port city of Vladivostok.

Started in 1891 by Czar Nicholas the 2nd, the line was intended to unite Europe and Asia and unlock the riches of Siberia.

Taking 25 years to complete, by 1916, with a bridge across the Amur River, tracks stretched from the Baltic to the Pacific.

Completely electrified only since 2002, the line serves a vital link for the Russian nation, and opens the vastness of the land up to everyone.

If you're interested in travel, you have no doubt dreamed of one day riding this fabled line.

Tim: It's on everybody's bucket list, I think, just about every schoolboys bucket list to travel on it one day, even if you don't, it's on the list.

Annc: There is no better way for Westerners to experience this vast country than by traveling the line on the Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express.

Tim: In 2007 we launched the Golden Eagle which is Russia's premier train - 21 carriages, totally en suite, high quality dining, a luxury cruise train.

Annc: The starting point of our journey is Vladivostok.

The home of the Russian Pacific fleet, the city was closed to foreigners until 1991.

Now anyone can walk through the Arsenal, which has been protecting the city since the 19th century.

Our visit will take us to the World War Two fleet submarine exhibit and naval memorial.

Plus we'll visit the Arseniev Museum, to see some examples of the area wildlife, including the famed Siberian tiger.

As our train pulls into the station, the crew and passengers alike get ready for this two week journey.

Tatiana: A lot of people come to visit our country but they only come to visit Moscow and St. Petersburg, probably a couple of other places in the European part of the country.

And the real Russia is not that.

The real Russia is vast and huge.

And to understand how big and how beautiful and how different the variety can be.

And this is the best way to do that.

Annc: Tatiana will be our guide for the next two weeks.

Tatiana: Khabarovsk usually was the showcase for the Soviet Far East.

And it was an historical and merchant place.

A center of commerce starting from the 19th century.

So streets there were made very nice and wide.

There is a lot of beautiful architecture in that city and its experiencing the boost of development and construction at the moment.

And we will see the beautiful Amur River, the widest river that the Trans-Siberian crosses.

And we will cross the Amur there in Khabarovsk by the longest bridge on the whole Trans Siberian.

a bridge that is about 2 ½ kilometers long.

We are only going to spend half a day in Ulan Bataar City, and we are going to visit the national park that is located about 50 kilometers from the city, the national park called Terejl that will provide you with the most amazing beautiful scenery of the countryside of Mongolia.

That's the real Mongolia.

Not the city but the very beautiful landscapes and families of herders living in their gers and their traditional lifestyles.

Annc: Before we head west, we'll stop in a village close to Ulan Ude, the capital of Buryatia.

Elena: Now we are in Tarbagatai Village.

That is the center of the Old Believers culture.

The population of the village is about 5,000 people and mostly old believers live here.

Here we can see one church that was built on the money of the locals, as well as the museum with items of everyday life of the Old Believers.

Apart from it, we can see traditional houses with the people who are ready to welcome us here and show how they live and how they used to live.

Music Annc: The largest fresh water lake in the world, Lake Baikal is probably the gem of our trip.

Traveling on a section of the old Circumbaikal Railway, everyone gets a look at the stunning scenery, which is beautiful in any weather.

A dip in the lake is supposed to add years to your life.

Cabbot: It was very cold.

It was something I've wanted to do for a long time and I finally did it.

All the way in, all the way in.

Natural Sound Natural Sound Tatiana: Our next stop is Irkutsk, the city that used to be the capital of Siberia for a very long time.

Relatively small but quite old 350 years.

It has a lot of culture and a lot of education and a lot of architecture and a lot of history in it and it provides all different kinds of experiences.

We will be walking through the city, we'll have a visit to the house of Prince Volkonsky, one of the exiled Decemberists, with a very nice concert there.

Annc: For the train staff, the time on board is just like any hotel.

Napkins are folded, food is prepared, meals are served, and beds are made.

For the passengers the days can be spent relaxing, catching up on photos and email, or just watching the passing trains or the small villages and miles and miles of forest that fly by the window.

Guitar music Tatiana: Our next stop will be Yekaterinburg, the city located on the border of Europe and Asia.

That's when we cross from Siberia into European Russia.

And now a days, the city is associated with the names of the Romanovs.

That was the last place where they lived, and it is where they were executed.

We are going to make a stop by the big cathedral, the Cathedral on the Blood, constructed in their memory and the memory of everybody who died during the civil war.

Annc: Kazan is an ancient city, which recently celebrated its thousandth year.

A mix of Orthodox and Tatar cultures, it sits astride the Volga River.

For Russians, the city has a special meaning.

It is home to the famous Russian singer Feodor Chaliapin.

Some of his repertoire is presented at a special concert.

Tatiana: We terminate our journey in the capitol of Russia, Moscow.

It is the most cosmopolitan, the most fast developing, the most hectic, but the most interesting and thriving city in the whole country.

A city that has a lot of history, a lot of culture and a lot of most interesting beautiful places to see.

Annc: What do our fellow travelers have to say?

Ross: We've enjoyed it.

I think it's very good, the foods been nice, the countryside's been lovely to see and I think the tour's been well conducted.

Martha: We have a world map at home on the back hall wall, and it has pins where we've been.

And I kept saying Look at this whole big part of the world.

No pins!

We need to go there.

Rami: I like it very much.

I must say that I've been to Siberia before, but this has been an absolutely fabulous trip.

Beverly: Do it.

It's the only thing I can say because it's just been so good.

Just forget about the cost, anything like that.

I think it's been a wonderful experience.

Annc: The Golden Eagle Trans-Siberian Express did indeed show us the vastness of Russia, a new and fascinating part of the world.

And it did so in style.

Trips on the Golden Eagle are truly trips of a lifetime and a wonderful adventure.

Next let's head to the southwest where a transplanted New Yorker shares his love of Lionel animated accessories on his interactive layout.

Annc: What is it about a button that kids of all ages can't resist?

That special curiosity is richly rewarded when visiting Angelo Lautazi's O-gauge layout in Scottsdale, Arizona.

With the touch of a button, visitors can control the animated accessories along his interactive model train layout.

Angelo: I grew up in New York.

In Woodhaven Queens.

Living in New York, we did get to make that pilgrimage to the Lionel showroom in Manhattan once in a while and that's where I became exposed to trains on a big scale and there I was amazed at the scenery and the mountains and all those operating accessories.

That's where I decided that I had to collect as many accessories as I could so I could put them into an operating layout.

Annc: Angelo's collection includes over two dozen Lionel and MTH accessories.

Angelo: My father started me.

We had a little Scout set running around the Xmas tree I think when I was 2 ½.

And he put a table in the basement so I had a little 4 by 8 train layout all through my childhood.

Annc: Today, Angelo has over 500 trains and his 20 by 30 feet layout is housed in a dedicated room over his 3-car garage.

But no matter the size of the layout, according to Angelo, just like a real developer, you have to make the most of the space you have.

To maximize his surface area, ingenuity is the name of the game: Angelo: Many collectors want that railroad yard on their layout, but most if they have the space go with the roundhouse.

In my case, I didn't have the space and just at the time I was looking to do something, Lionel came out with their reissue of their transfer table, and it was a perfect fit because now I could get some yard action and still manage it, size-wise.

I always had to have an airport.

I loved model planes.

And where to put it was a problem because it did take up some space and I just had a Eureka moment one day where I said why not put the airport in the sky and if filled the other corner opposite my mountain and I think it worked out pretty well.

Annc: Angelo is particularly fond of his city sites.

He's put a great deal of detail into these realistic scenes which are loaded with buildings, vehicles, people and lots of action.

Natural Sound Natural Sound Angelo's great attention to detail extends to keeping his '50s and '60s era layout faithful to the vintage vehicles of that time.

He's accumulated quite a collection of die cast cars and trucks.

He also makes sure to add drivers and passengers to the vehicles for more realistic modeling scenes.

Angelo: I decided the layout would have a mountain scene at some point and the back corner seemed a perfect spot.

I acquired this On-30 Backman engine which runs on HO track and I decided that the best way to incorporate it into the layout was to put it across that back wall and it just kind of blended in with the mountain theme th I was constructing at the time.

Annc: Angelo's respect for every detail extends to the panoramic murals that blend into his layout.

Angelo: I noticed in visiting different train layouts that the best ones always had some scenery in the background.

So that's what I started to do, I started to search the web for photos and then I would stitch them together in Photoshop, print them out and past them on poster board.

Then I glued them to the wall.

Annc: Hobbyists and builders are rarely content to rest on their laurels.

There's always that next feature to develop, that new project on the drawing boards.

Angelo's future plans include building a single loop subway line and station, a nod to his New York roots and his multi-level real estate developer philosophy.

And there will be -- no doubt -- an opportunity to add even more interactive buttons to the delight of his visitors....

The layout is always evolving as Tony continues his work Later in this program, we'll meet man whose love of toy trains has encouraged him to incorporate all gauges into his collection.

Before we do, we'll introduce you to a man whose childhood dream never left him.

In fact, the dream sustained him throughout his retirement years and allowed him to leave a part of it to his community.

Annc: Across the Ohio River from Cincinnati, in Covington, Kentucky, you'll find the Behringer Crawford Museum.

The museum is dedicated to telling regional transportation stories.

One of those stories started with local businessman Ray Faragher.

He had a childhood dream.

Ruth: Ray's dream started when he was about five years old.

His grandmother lived in a little home in Ludlow, Kentucky.

And the streetcars did this circle around her house.

And he would always see the motorman using his handle, and he thought that would be the neatest job.

Annc: Ray joined the Navy, and by the time he returned home, the streetcars were gone.

The demands of business kept Ray busy, but upon retirement, Ruth brought streetcars back into his life.

Ruth: That's was when I bought him his first train.

And he really got into it.

I mean every day he was downstairs working on that train.

Annc: Ray became ill, and wanted his project to live on.

He saw an opportunity in the form of the local museum.

Laurie: The Behringer Crawford Museum was undergoing a major renovation and expansion project when Ray Faragher came in and told me about this fantastic layout that he had in his home, that he had built and put together.

And wanted as part of his legacy and his families legacy to share it with the rest of the community.

And the layout fit in terrific with the plan and development of the museum.

The museum is all about stories.

And this layout fit in perfectly with another story to tell about this region.

It fits in beautifully to be able to tell the story of Ludlow, Kentucky and northern Kentucky in the 1940s.

Plus, it brings in Ray's story.

It's another example of tying our community in with it's residents and it's heritage.

Annc Getting the layout from Ray's basement to the museum required the expertise of John Lange and the Greater Cincinnati Garden Railway Society.

John: It took us just about a year from the time we started dismantling it at Rays house to where we opened it down here.

It was just about a year of effort.

And that included redoing a lot of the buildings, not rebuilding them, simply making sure lights were working and making sure the people were in the right places.

It was all built as a replicate as exact as what we could of what Ray had in his house.

Annc: While some of the layout is fiction, many of the buildings are from Ray's childhood.

John: On the other side there, there's one called Farrell's Drugs that was actually a Ludlow building, as Ray was growing up.

There's another one, Schrage's Hardware on the layout here.

A few of the buildings on here were not in Ludlow.

Ah, Chester's Roadhouswas not in Ludlow.

However, that was one of Ray's favorite restaurants, so it is now in Ray's Ludlow.

Also, there's Faragher Bakery.

Again there was no Faragher Bakery in Ludlow but Ray always loved bakery goods so as he built, he had to put how own bakery in it.

For instance there's Boot's Boutique.

And Boots is his wife's nickname, so she got her own building.

Annc: Ray put a great deal of hand built detail in the layout.

John: There is not a plastic kit anywhere on this layout.

Every single one of them were built primarily from doll house parts.

And if Ray couldn't find the parts, he made them.

Laurie: It's all hand made.

And I don't think you really realize that until you start looking at it and you get a very close look at it and the detail.

Extremely detail oriented.

Annc: It takes a lot of looking to see all the details.

John: I worked with Ray, for almost three years before he passed away.

And even though I was up there almost every week, I'd walk in and see something and say "Ray, you just added this. "

And he'd say "no, it's been there all along.

You just didn't see it."

Annc: In addition to helping visitors experience the past, Behringer Crawford has additional goals.

Laurie: I think the goal of having this layout here is multiple.

Again, it's about the stories that the layout tells us.

It's about the buildings, it's about the companies, it's about the residents of northern Kentucky.

And it's here to be able to share to the community.

So what we want is for people to be able to come in.

It helps us attract a different audience to the museum.

What it is also about is entertainment.

You get preschool kids who come in and immediately run in, push buttons, crawl through the tunnel, come up in the bubbles.

And you get the older people standing by enjoying it, having fun.

I think that's what very important.

The goal is to be able to educa but, but have fun while you're learning.

Annc: Ray's layout is an operating piece of folk art.

If you find yourself in southern Ohio, cross the river into northern Kentucky and stop in at the Behringer Crawford Museum to see a testament to one man's realized dream.

Music Dennis: I never met a gauge I didn't like.

Annc: Unlike most modelers who run one or maybe two different gauge models, Dennis Cannon runs six gauges, on a five hundred square foot layout boasting eight hundred feet of track.

Dennis: The largest size is the G gauge, the LGB.

And then from there we go down to the standard.

I think the standard gauge train because it's tinplate and it really looks and evokes a lot of tinplate memories to a lot of people.

That's a very interesting train.

And when you get into the lower gauges, I like the scale and realism of the S gauge.

And O.

Well, we all know about O. O is just such a popular gauge, O and O27, with the Lionel name on it.

And HO is really cute in the city.

That's the trolley Annc: More is better when it comes to Dennis's philosophy about gauges.

And this philosophy carries over to his rolling stock as well.

Dennis can run an amazing 15 different trains, trolleys, and antique cars at any one time.

One of the trains Dennis still runs on this layout is the very first train his Dad gave him; an S gauge American Flyer.

He learned another helpful lesson from his father when it came to creating his own layout.

Dennis: One of the things he did was, he built the layout extremely low.

And even as a young child I remember seeing it and enjoying it without being picked up.

I wanted to do the same thing for my layout for children.

So we kept it down about 26 to 30 inches.

But I think it's most fun, you'll even find adults stooping down around the layout and looking out a ground level and remembering those childhood memories.

The trains are long.

And those trains can actually be totally hidden in the tunnel.

Sometimes a train will go into a tunnel and stay there and come out later on.

And a visitor or viewer will say, "Wow, I don't remember seeing that."

There's also one train that will enter the tunnel on the level side of the layout, actually on the ground side, and it elevates through the tunnel and comes up on the higher side or the elevated side.

It runs through the city and reverses it's direction, goes back in the tunnel, and then actually descends back to the original ground level of the layout.

Annc: His fascination for tunnels is only exceeded by his appreciation for illumination.

Dennis: If you count the stars and you count the perimeter lights, I think we're looking at around 1400.

We can actually dim the lights, we can provide any kind of intensity.

It's interesting.

When you look at a city, when the city gets a little sleepy, around 10, 11 o'clock, the lights dim.

So we can control those lights.

The overhead lights are all controlled on dimmers.

We can turn off all the house lights at one time, we can just use streetlights.

But lighting is, I think, very key and essential to many layouts, and we have a little bit of that layout magic to show you.

Annc: To get children of all ages involved in checking out all the bells, whistles and details involved in his labor of love, Dennis has developed something of a scavenger hunt game.

Girl: When he gets to the top he's going to turn on the light Dennis: What we've done is, we've created a sheet that we give to the children or adults.

And on that sheet we ask them to find certain hidden items, either operating or not.

So as you go around the perimeter of the layout there's letters, and you'll take down an A, B, C, D, whatever letter you see closest to that piece.

At the end we give you a score and if you're a winner, you'll get a prize.

It could be as little as a candy cane, or it could be a flashlight or a Santa surprise.

So I think it's kind of interesting for the kids.

Annc: From the first Erector set ever made in 1913, to over seventy operating displays, there are plenty of things to discover.

Ambient sound Dennis: The famous memories in my lifetime are my trains, and my father setting up my trains.

So trains always invoke fun times and holidays.

When I come home from work, again, it invokes those childhood memories.

And sitting back and just turning on all the lights, turning on the trains.

Again it invokes those memories of childhood and fun.

And I get down at eye level and watch the trains go by, pulling into the station, whatever.

And again, we're back into the '60's and into the '50s, into the great times when families enjoyed layouts and trains and holidays.

Dennis is quite active in the Gilbert Heritage Society, which preserves all things from the A. C. Gilbert Company.

That's it for this episode.

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

Tracks Ahead Brought to you by Rancho de Tia Rosa, three unique Mexican restaurants serving culinary delights since 1990.

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

Trains and Travel International, providing quality tourist and rail fan travel since 1984.

Music Music