Originally published in The Nome Nugget, Summer 1994
My father loved trains. Oh, he put pennies on the track in Ohio for the Nickel Plate to crush and he set up a Lionel train under the Christmas tree every year like a lot of other kids. But then he got serious.
He built layouts by hand for his beloved HO trains and drove long distances to train shows. He collected train videos, read all the train hobbyist magazines, and took many rolls of film of depots, locomotives, and narrow-gauge tracks. On my last visit with him, we chased a locomotive pulling gypsum ore cars. We’d stop the car, jump out, take pictures, and then jump back into the car to pursue the train farther down the track. (To other train addicts, this is not considered unusual behavior at all.) My dad was also a tourist at train depots. Years ago, I sheepishly asked him to take me to Union Station in Los Angeles for a midnight train back east. Fearing he might think the drive too long and the hour too late, he brightened and said, “Oh, sure, I’ll take you! I go down there to look at the locomotives about once a week, anyway.”
If my dad hadn’t passed away in 1993, I would have brought him up here to see all the old train trestles and stuff around Nome. I would have followed the old Wild Goose train routes and shown him the old ore cars: a “Train Addict’s Tour of Nome.” And he would have loved The Trains to Nowhere. I think he would have enjoyed driving out to see those old wheels sitting in the fog and mud, then go back again on a sunny day to photograph the green tundra growing through the rusted forms or a glaucous gull perched on top of the cab. And I know he would have snapped another roll of film of those same trains after a snowfall.
Every Father’s Day it was really easy for us to choose a gift. We’d just go to the local train and hobby shop and buy some train stuff. It might be a package of miniature townspeople, tiny billboards, HO scale cars and trucks, or a new needlenose pliers for pushing in those tiny silver spikes.
I inherited those HO trains when he passed away. My husband helped tear down that last layout and packed up 50 years of locos, depots, rolling stock, reefers, electrical switches, and countless yards of track into twelve large boxes. Although they’re in storage now in the lower 48, my dad’s grandsons now dream of putting together a big model train layout someday. And that’s probably the best Father’s Day gift I could have given him.
Post a Comment