The Miniature Express

The "World's Greatest Hobby on Tour" at the Dulles Expo Center on Saturday, February 11, 2006.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Hear That Whistle?

The trains have all pulled out of the station, and the World's Greatest Hobby Show is over. Please enjoy our archived entries.

CREDITS
Producer/editor: Linda Sponsler
Writer: Cari DiMargo
Photographers and writers: Catherine Conlon & Kathleen Bryan

Monday, February 13, 2006

Photo Gallery




Saturday, February 11, 2006

It's a Kid's World

"I like the whistle,” said Sydney Rymes, age 5, at the World's Greatest Hobby Show. “It's like a really loud tooting sound."

Sydney, from Jefferson, Md., accompanied her family to this unique event that entertains kids of all ages. Babies in strollers watched patiently as their older siblings pretended to be train conductors in the hands-on train playground.

The goal of the World's Greatest Hobby On Tour is to get the younger generation interested in model railroading. Promoter Dave Swanson noted that two-thirds of the show's attendees are under 16. “I love model railroading and I want it to continue to be a popular hobby,” said Swanson. “If you don't get into it as a kid, you won't get involved as an adult.”

The 100 “Thomas the Tank Engine” trains delighted Jake Koneczny, 4, of Burke, Va. “I haven't been able to get him away from the Thomas trains. He wants to buy everything he sees,” said Chuck Tamasi, Jake's grandfather.

Despite today's winter storm warning, the crowds are brisk at this family-friendly hobby show at the Dulles Expo Center. Neither snow, nor sleet, nor dreary rains, deters them from seeing those fabulous trains!



Virtual Railroad

Retro trains whiz past 1940s- and '50s-era cars, all tailfins and turquoise. Urban settings consist of window pane-covered factories; tiny wooden farm houses dominate the rural areas.

The Potomac Module Crew's train display is old-fashioned, but state-of-the-art technology makes it happen.

Each engine has an encoder, and train owners control them remotely with wireless devices called throttles. "Engineers" can determine direction of engines regardless of the way they're facing. Digital Command Control has been around for about 10 years, and it's still cutting-edge.


"The technology is so close that anything that happens on the real railroad happens here," said Ralph Douglas, a member of several DC-area train clubs, including the Potomac Module Crew. Douglas should know: He's also a volunteer engineer for the Walkersville Southern Railroad in Frederick, Md.

The Disney Express

Michael Broggie rode the Disneyland railroad on its first voyage around the park, and he's got the picture to prove it. The enlarged black and white picture hangs today at the Walt Disney's Railroad Story booth at the World’s Greatest Hobby Show.

Broggie’s father served as Disney's first engineer. "I literally grew up in Walt Disney’s backyard," Broggie said. "The idea of Disneyland came out of the backyard train set."

Today, Broggie is the founding chairman of Carolwood Pacific Historical Society, which creates railroad products for the Disney corporation. Expo visitors were snapping up Broggie's $70 hardcover Disney biography and the slim children's version. He signed stacks of books in a practiced imitation of Disney’s scrawl. The Martin family of Warrenton, Va., asked Broggie to sign both books and a CD. Carla Martin, 12, posed for a picture.

"A lot of youngsters today don’t realize that Walt Disney was a real person," said Broggie. He's certainly more eager to talk about Disney than himself -- and he's doing his best to share his memories of the 2,600 feet of train tracks that once covered Walt Disney's backyard.

You Go, We Go, LEGO

Turns out that "blockhead" isn't always an insult, at least for members of the Washington, DC Metropolitan Area LEGO Train Club. Their display at the World's Greatest Hobby Show had visitors gasping with delight and eagerly pointing out hidden details, some staggeringly minute. A skeleton sits abandoned on a hill; Jar Jar Binks of "Star Wars" notoriety is just another bus passenger. Spider-Man scales the side of a building. A brave soul is perched at the top of a waterfall, poised to go over in a barrel.

Harry Potter, R2D2 and Dracula hang here, too, tucked away among H2 SUVs, the old woman's shoe house, a Wild West town and a comfy little village with 17 homes.

The human touches mingle with a computer-generated track design. LEGO Train Club member Bob Hayes freely tells admirers the software is free on the Internet. This morning's four-hour set-up, of course, doesn't include the three months of construction on a majestic 1930s-style train station.

LEGOs aren't cheap, but Hayes says they've been building their collection for years. He gave away his childhood LEGOs at age 13, but started collecting them again when he became a dad. This display contains about $10,000 worth of equipment, easily out of the range of the average 13-year-old. "That's kind of why we're an adult club," said Hayes.A kid's hobby on an adult's budget? Priceless.

Turn Up the Trains

A familiar howl cuts over the din at the Dulles Expo Center, where the World's Greatest Hobby Show (yes, model trains) has chugged into town. The thumping beat and muscular yowl of steam and diesel engines provides an appropriate soundtrack on compact disc.

"They sound more like the trains than the train," quips Rick Gray, owner of Big Train Sound. He created his first disc in 1994 as an audio backdrop for his own model trains. “Back then, all you could get was a $300 sound module,” he said.

Gray sells his five discs for $20 a pop: steam, diesel, "Heavy Metal" (steam and diesel mix), early diesel, and one disc of motorcycle sounds: "Big Bikes, Big Thunder." He collects digital samples from railroad yards and crossings, then synthesizes and edits the sound files.

The discs dish up decent white noise as well: Gray said some of his customers purchase the CDs to play while they sleep.




Click on the play button to listen to the "Big Train Sounds"
that Rick Gray played on his display sound system.
AUDIO CREDIT: Catherine Conlon