By LAURA SPENCER
Kansas News Service
Union Station
has one of the largest model rail exhibits in the United States, with
more than 80 trains of all sizes. When decorating for the holidays
starts in October, the display gets even bigger.
Oversized wreaths
can be viewed from outside, hanging in the Grand Hall’s massive
windows, and inside are dozens of decorated Christmas trees, including
one that’s about 40 feet tall.
“This is considered Kansas City’s
lobby — its front door. More importantly, it is our home,” says
president and CEO George Guastello. “So, when you have to decorate and
welcome people to your home for the holidays, ours just takes a little
bit longer.”
The expanded model train exhibit features
snow-covered villages complete with tiny, plastic ice skaters on a pond,
dramatic terrain and thousands of sparkling lights.
“All the
layouts have multiple levels,” says Guastello, “so little kids can get
down, up close and personal, a little bit larger kids can experience,
and then the parents can live through the experience and just feel (a)
part of it.”
About 50 volunteers design, maintain and build the model train
exhibit year-round. During the holiday season, 8,000 square feet of
model trains expand to 10,000 square feet, and more than 100 trains.
“I try to come in once a week or every other week,” says Bob Crown. “During the holidays, it’s pretty much every day.”
Crown
has volunteered at the model train display since 2005 and drives in
from Lawrence. He says some volunteers repair engines and others paint
snowy mountain scenes, but his main job is to make sure the trains are
running.
Using an app on his iPad, Crown starts a train and blows
the horn. “That’s a horn sounding to go across the crossing, warn the
cars.”
When he was 7 or 8 years old, Crown got an American Flyer model train for Christmas. Trains still bring him a lot of joy.
“It’s
a coming together, and when you see the children that come through,” he
says, “and if you’re here running your trains and letting them run your
trains with you — just the joy and their smile and the happiness and
the parents and the whole holiday tradition.”
“That’s our pat on the back, and that’s our ‘thank you,’” Crown says.
Sandra
Clayman stands next to a village scene where she’s been placing small
houses. Clayman’s dad, Richard Mettle, collected trains. Every year for
Christmas, he and her mom, Frances, would bring them up from the
basement.
“And it was a three, three-and-a-half-week process,” she
says. “He constructed a platform. The Christmas tree went on it, and it
had tunnels.”
Mettle grew up in Kansas City and left by train to
serve in the Army during World War II. He died in April, and Clayman’s
mom, who lives in Longview, Texas, decided to donate his train set to
Union Station.
Clayman says it’s her turn to set up the trains this year.
“I’m
learning a little more about setting up the track and, you know, how to
change stuff on the trains,” she says. “So it’s fun to do it.”
Inside a workshop space just off the Great Hall, Ted Tschirhart wears
a blue and white striped engineer’s cap. He’s surrounded by boxes of
Lionel trains, wires and tools.
Tschirhart was a tool designer and
an engineer. He’s volunteered for Union Station for more than 20 years,
and since 2005, he’s headed up the model train display. In those early
years, volunteers were learning from trial and error, taking things
apart and putting them back together.
“We would start Labor Day
weekend, and we would build and get it ready by Thanksgiving — it would
take us that long,” he says. “And then all this had to have wires —
everything had to be wired, and transformers, and we had all this
stuff.”
These days, the installation process goes a little bit
faster. This year, Tschirhart started working with other volunteers on
Oct. 21 to get the holiday display ready to open before Thanksgiving.
“I’ve
got plenty of space for them to work,” he says with a laugh. “So we
just need the volunteers to agree to come, and we’ll keep you busy.”
With
an influx of donations, and volunteers with lots of their own ideas,
Tschirhart says every year brings something new to see.
