Local railroaders are getting ready to leave the station and roll into one of Edmonton's largest annual model train shows.
Rail fans from across Western Canada will stop at the Mayfield Trade Centre this weekend to take a gander at the 15th annual Great Edmonton Model Train Show. The annual event gives modellers a chance to show off their collections and learn new tricks about how to make and run tiny trains.
St. Albert resident Laszlo Szojka will be there as part of the Northern Alberta Lego Users Group with an all-new 14-module display made from about a million pieces of Lego.
Just don't ask him what it'll look like — each member of the club is working on his or her module independently, and the plan is to link them all together at the show. "One person is doing a golf course, another person is doing a mill scene," he says. "We don't even know what it's going to look like."
Big trains, small trains
The show itself is organized by the Mainline Model Railroaders Fellowship, an umbrella group for the Edmonton region's many train clubs.
The show usually draws about 8,000 guests, says club treasurer Dave Robinson, and features 40,000 square feet of train scenery, including 22 huge layouts, vendors and choo-choos of all sizes.
"Anything from little tiny ones that could fit on the top of your finger to great big ones that you can ride." Experts will also be on hand to give seminars on model railroading.
Model railroads range in size from huge (1:8 scale) to tiny (1:220 or smaller), Robinson says. "I've seen Z-scale layouts in a briefcase," he says, referring to one of the smallest commercial scales available. Most run through detailed layouts featuring homes, farms, people and buildings.
Many of these layouts take years to complete. Robinson's group, the Edmonton Society of Model Railroad Engineers, is bringing a 24-metre-by-seven-metre layout that's been in the works for 20 years. "It's been a real labour of love," Robinson says, and now features a city, a refinery, mountains, a rail yard, roads and cars, all built to scale.
These layouts can cost thousands of dollars, Szojka notes, which is why non-Lego modellers almost never dismantle them. "They keep adding detail to their display. We just keep changing our display."
His group's layouts are usually packed with moving parts in order to hold kids' attention, Szojka says.
"One year we even had a tornado going," he notes — one of their houses broke, so they put a motorized twister in it as a gag.
No matter the size, almost all model railroads have an incredible level of detail to them. The layout Robinson's group is showing, for example, features a beaver pond with a goose nest, skunks attempting to steal eggs from said nest, moose, bulrushes and more. Pay attention, and you might notice that the moving cars in the city obey the display's working traffic lights, stopping on red and going on green.
The key to appreciating model railroads is to really sit down and soak in the details, Szojka says. Pay attention to the suburb he's developing, for example, and you might spot mobs of mimes, crazy clowns and a cop eating a doughnut.
The appeal of model railroads comes from taking pride in a world that you build with your own hands, Robinson says.
"It's all about putting together a miniature empire and saying, 'This is mine.'"
He encouraged everyone to come out to the show and take a look — shows like this one are often the only times the general public can see these layouts. "Otherwise, it's just packed away."
The show runs all weekend from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tickets are $6. For details, call Rob at 780-478-5622.
