Tiny trains deliver big crowds to Railfest

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November 12, 2006

By Bill Archer The Bluefield Daily Telegraph Sun Nov 12, 2006, 09:19 PM EST

BLUEFIELD — With 17 years of experience in staging one of the region’s most popular model train shows, the Pocahontas Chapter of the National Railway Historical Society put together a gem of a show for their 18th Railfest.

“This is the most we’ve ever had here,” Kelley Massie, president of the chapter said. “We have literally filled up the Herb Sims Youth Center and city auditorium. We have the most dealer tables with 80, the most community service displays with the Mercer County Historical Society, Norfolk Southern’s Operation Lifesaver, the Virginia Passenger Train Association and more. We have layouts here of Logan, Lynchburg, Va., our chapter’s layout of southern West Virginia and southwestern Virginia and a Lionel layout of Beckley that is brand new.”

Doff Huffman of Mount Tabor (near Beckley) started working on his Lionel layout immediately following the conclusion of last year’s Railfest. “I’ve put in about a year on it,” Huffman said. “I really get a lot of help with it from my family.”

Huffman, 61, has been building train layouts since he was “5 or 6 years old,” he said. “I don’t collect trains although I have some collectable pieces just because I’ve had them for 50 years. I like to play with trains. That’s why I have them.”

Ryan Dillow, 11, of Bland, Va., has been adding stock to his personal collection of HO Scale trains for the past few years. “Since I started coming here,” he said.

Ryan and his father, Norman Dillow spent time looking at all the bells and whistles of the show. “I’ve always enjoyed trains ever since I was little,” Ryan Dillow said. His favorite piece is his NS locomotive.

Jack Richardson, a long time NS engineer who is now retired, was walking through the show, shaking hands with many railroaders he knew. “Even after I retired, I kept training new locomotive engineers,” Richardson said. “I traveled all over the country to help.”

Steve Hermansen of Rocky Gap, Va., uses John Deere equipment on his farm so it was a logical step for him to start collecting John Deere equipment mounted on HO Scale model railroad rolling stock. His display shows the evolution of the models since the company went into model railroading in 1997.

“This is a great company with a heritage that goes back to 1837,” Hermansen said.

Jack Warner of the Virginia Piedmont & Central HO Model Railroaders traveled 300 miles to share the organization’s incredible layout with Railfest visitors. “It’s a good-sized and well-organized show,” Warden said. “We have a much larger layout, but we brought this one.”

Warner explained that each of the club’s 14 members works on an individual module built to National Model Railroad Association standards. When the railroaders put up a display at a show, a school, nursing home or hospital, the operators connect all the modules together and start running trains.

“We started out four years ago with just five members,” Warner said. “We have associate members as young as 10 years old.”

Jordan Blankenship, 8, was sitting on a stool near Huffman’s Lionel layout seemingly mesmerized by the locomotive and cars moving on the track. “I love it,” he said. He has been coming to the show with his uncle Richard Shumate for the past two years.

Ben Donevant has been active with the Pocahontas Chapter since the early years of Railfest and started working on his circus module 15 years ago. With hand-made trucks, circus tents to scale and an intricate scene in miniature, the module was drawing a lot of attention at the show.

“It’s a work in progress,” Donevant said.

Massie said 600 people visited the show on Saturday, and 100 people had entered the door during the first hour of the show on Sunday afternoon. “November is national hobbying month, and this has been a great show along those lines as well as something that brings tourists to the area. That’s what we’re working to do.”

The show featured N-Scale, operating HO Scale and Lionel model layouts as well as garden trains and collectibles.

– Contact Bill Archer at barcher@bdtonline.com