Making tracks

The carousel, the brewery and the skyscraper all have to go.

Moving day is approaching for the structures made in miniature to match model trains that buzz by in sizes small, smaller and smallest inside the Augusta County Railroad Museum in Waynesboro.

After three years in a retail space next to Kroger on Arch Avenue, the model train club must move by spring, when the grocery store will add a gas station and drive-thru pharmacy and demolish the mostly vacant adjoining spaces.

“We have about a three-year life span,” said train club Past President Jack Ward, laughing.

The club has occupied the space rent-free. That's identical to the rent-free arrangement the club previously had for space in the old Waynesboro Outlet Village.

The nonprofit club operates on dues from about 25 members and public donations from monthly open house events. Donations “barely cover the light bill,” Ward said, without a hint of frustration. That’s just the way it goes for the small hobby group.

While sprinkling green powder that serves as grass in a train landscape, Ward expressed little concern about the club’s possible homelessness. Members slowly have begun a search for space and reached out to Waynesboro Downtown Development Inc. for ideas.

The current space, at about 2,000 square feet, is a little cramped anyway, Ward said.

Club President Walt Neubauer, of Penn Laird near Harrisonburg, said the room is plenty long at 90 feet, but its 21-foot width is too narrow. The club was spoiled at their previous 3,000-square-foot location, he said.

Neubauer walked into a rear storage room to show off stacks of landscapes the club isn’t able to showcase because of current limitations. A scenic bridge sits atop rows of pastoral scenes.

Each scene is composed atop a 4- to 6-foot wooden framework resembling a table. The scenes are meticulously constructed to be a consistent height so tracks and hidden wiring can connect from one to the next.

They’re also mobile, to varying degrees. When the club takes a dozen of the table-sized “modules” to a show such as the Augusta County Fair, the move and setup time is about five hours.

For trains that measure 1/87th of their full-size counterparts, moving their landscapes still requires muscle and precision. To move to a new home will take multiple weekends, Neubauer said.

“It’s a pain in the neck,” said member Sam Rothgeb, of Staunton.

The club has access to a tractor-trailer, but if that falls through members will “beg, borrow and steal ... vans and trailers and everything else” for the move, Neubauer said.

For now, the club continues to prepare for its busiest time of the year.

On a recent night, club members tweaked a motor that keeps a carousel from spinning too fast and worked on a river gorge scene.

Ward ended his sprinkling of faux grass only to talk his “N-scale” cityscape, which includes, at 1/160th of actual size, a train station, a skyscraper, a pawn shop and an apartment complex he crafted.

A firefighter plucks a cat from a tree, boys play baseball on an undeveloped urban wedge and travelers on a station platform, like the club, prepare to travel to the next destination.