Workin' on the railroad

Model railroaders keep passion for hobby alive

By NANCY KIMBALL / The Daily Inter Lake

Close your eyes and you're there, steel rails winding off over a high trestle and through a tunnel carved into towering mountains.

A slow chug kicks in as a steam engine fires to life.

Systems are tested, whistles and squeals going full bore.

Open your eyes and you're watching the Southern Pacific's American Freedom engine pull a handful of rail cars up the track, smoke puffing from its stack in perfect sync with its churning wheels.

In a Lilliputian world, it would be life-size. In ours, it's a painstakingly detailed O-scale model railroad replica.

Chris Gower and Vance Carolin have a foot in each of those worlds.

"The truth of the matter is that we're excited about this," Gower said. With very little prompting, he offers up bits of history, explanations of the model train's digitally controlled sound system, sources for minuscule parts, how to custom-paint stock parts for a realistic recreation of a time gone by.

The fact is, there's pretty much nothing about model railroading that Gower and Vance don't know. They live every train-loving kid's Christmas dream 365 days a year.

They are the model railroading guys at Wheaton's sports and hobby store in Kalispell.

Their expertise put them in charge of the department, Carolin in 2002 and Gower the next year. But the romance of railroading keeps them there.

Because of their tireless dedication to the hobby in home life and at work, Kalispell's location on the Great Northern Railway's historic main line and an inconspicuous but well-placed advertisement in Model Railroader magazine, they get calls from every state in the nation and around the world.

"Guys from thousands of miles away collect Montana stuff," Gower said.

They hear from Germany and Switzerland, from a man in Amsterdam who visits every year, from a guy in Nova Scotia who calls every four or five months for something more to feed his Great Northern Railway passion.

"I've been doing this since I was 6, and I turn 33 next week," Gower said. He watched a couple of how-to videos on building a model railroad as a child, but pretty much is self-taught.

"When I started out there weren't many people doing it," he said. "But it caught on."

He also has a passion for muscle cars and proudly drives a 1970 Chevelle two-door hardtop. But he's followed the tendencies of many model railroaders, too.

"A lot of guys have their hands in everything. Model railroading is fun because you can get into carpentry, wiring, computers," he said. "You can build from scratch or buy the parts and super-detail it."

Carolin has a couple of decades on Gower but he, too, started when he was 6.

"I've been in and out of it all my life," Carolin said. "I started with an O-scale layout. My dad built it from 4-by-8 plywood painted green, with a Lionel set. That was a pretty good Christmas for me."

He's branched out - got a military background in radar electronics, built his own house, started a rebuilt-computer business, ran his own hobby shop in Polson - but he's always kept up his interest in model railroading.

It lets him use carpentry, wiring, computer skills, painting, model landscape sculpting, research skills and photography of the real trains.

"It really develops your creativity," Carolin said, "and that leaks off into other areas of your life."

Lionel and Rail King are big brand names at Christmas, but how does model railroading fare in a holiday season when economic woes are cinching down Santa's bag everywhere?

"Hobbies can actually flourish in tough economic times," Gower said. Model trains particularly can be a big draw "because you can go down to the basement [and spend an evening on the train layout] and you don't have to go out and spend money."

It really can be a family affair, too. Although their typical customer has been a man in his late 30s to 80s, he said, "we're starting to get younger kids [and] there are getting to be more women involved, more couples."

Sales in Wheaton's model railroading department actually were up 15 percent in November from the same month a year earlier, the men said. Carolin said sales have grown 10 to 15 percent every year over the same month a year earlier since he started at Wheaton's.

A basic HO-scale 4-by-8-foot layout costs around $200, but Gower said the individual hobbyist can spend as much or as little as he wishes.

"I think people are just spending their money in different places," Gower said. "They're not buying houses, they're not buying cars but they're obviously buying hobbies."

Carolin and Gower feed that trend their connections with other model railroaders.

Case in point: When Carolin ran his Polson hobby shop, he stumbled across a 1943 Great Northern Caboose X234 in a field near Great Falls. It was for sale. He connected the seller with Dick Bratton, a railroad enthusiast he knew from the model railroad club Carolin started in Polson in 1995, and over the coming years got involved with restoring Bratton's caboose to its original condition, with an all-wood upper cab on a steel tender frame. They converted it to an apartment with piped-in water and it now sits near Finley Point on the east shore of Flathead Lake. The restoration was so authentic that with only minor adjustments it could go back on the rails just as in the 1940s.

And all because of his interest in model railroading.

"It takes you to interesting places," he said. "This kind of romance of the trains permeates a lot of things."

Carolin and his wife are avid photographers who track down operational bits of iron horse history and drive to where they are running the rails just so they can watch them run and take home a few shots. It's called rail fanning, a movement among railroad enthusiasts across the nation.

Gower, for his part, spends a lot of time in his basement working on the biggest layout he's ever had - covering a 20-by-30-foot space with train track running up along the walls with landscapes, railroad fixtures and more, all detailed to the finest degrees.

His devotion is much like that of his customers and model railroading buddies across the valley.

"It's probably going to be a 20-year project," he said of his own and others' devotion to their model railroad layouts, "but it's going to be exquisite."

Gower has mastered nearly every aspect of building authentic recreations of old-time trains, but keeps looking for more and bigger challenges. He's worked with Carolin to build a layout in the back of Wheaton's with track looping around a mountain, through a tunnel, into a small community and past a lake with an airplane nose-diving overhead and a pilot parachuting out of it.

"I try to capture some humor," Gower said with a grin, "or some mayhem that may be humorous."

Both men are committed to turning their customers' visits into experiences to be remembered and repeated.

Generous with their own information and anecdotes, they offer suggestions for enthusiasts to get the exact detail they seek in their models. For those who want to learn more, they suggest connecting with the National Model Railroading Association. They helped host a regional convention in Kalispell a year and a half ago. They pick the brains of Great Northern Railway Historical Society members and former Great Northern employees, and share what they learn. They track down discontinued model railroad parts for people from across the country who call Wheaton's after running into dead ends elsewhere.

"It seems to me that you need to love your customers more and your money less," Carolin said. "Because if you love your customers more and your money less, you'll end up with more of both."

Living in a part of the country where there still are a lot of real engines around helps fuel both the hobbyists and the old-time steam engine enthusiasts. Add that to the romantic lure of the West, where trains are king, and you have a recipe for lifelong adventure.

Both men's eyes sparkle at the mere thought.

After all, Carolin said, "The joy is the journey in life."

Reporter Nancy Kimball can be reached at 758-4483 or by e-mail at nkimball@dailyinterlake.com