Model trains recreate rail history

[John Ashworth]

Model trains recreate rail history
From the Sudbury Town Crier, MA, USA

By Carole LaMond
GateHouse News Service
Thu Aug 09, 2007, 10:29 AM EDT

In Folk Tales, a summer series about Sudbury people, we profile a resident each week who has a hobby, skill or passion that makes life more fun or interesting. To suggest candidates for the series contact LaMondCNC@aol.com


The steady chug of a steam engine and the intermittent clang of a coal shovel help to set the mood as Ken Throckmorton works the throttle to send a train off on its course through an elaborate model railroad, each tiny building and railroad car a labor of love that he fashioned by hand.

"You don’t hear steam sounds today, you hear air horns from diesels, a totally different sound," said Throckmorton who programmed the 32-button control to create the distinctive sounds of eight different engines.

The history of the Chesapeake and Ohio Railroad in Thurmond and Hinton, W. Va. comes to life in the basement of Throckmorton’s Sudbury home where a complex system of railroad track runs past tiny hamlets and rivers, through mountain tunnels and over bridges, all rendered in authentic detail copied from historical records for the year 1953.

"It’s all West Virginia, every single bit of it," said Throckmorton. "All of the cars are store-bought, but they’ve all been repainted because I had to make them appropriate for the Chesapeake and Ohio. Every building is built by hand."

Throckmorton worked from historical plans and old photographs to create dozens of buildings from the Armour Meat Packing Company to the National Bank of Thurmond, all arranged exactly as they were in 1953 right down to the outhouses. The Hinton section includes a turntable, roundhouse, coaling dock and all the buildings that were part of this major railyard. Hinton, in the New River Gorge, was the place where all the engines were changed.

"The Hinton Depot took a long time to put together, as well as that 800-ton coaling dock. The only thing that gave me the shape I needed for that was a tuna can," said Throckmorton of the circular structure. "You work through things and learn how to do them. It’s a lot of fun."

The model railroad, set on a raised platform about 52-inches high, takes up most of the basement. The railroad platform is in the form of a rectangle, with one section against the wall, so that Throckmorton can stand in the middle and work on all four sides of the set-up, or move along three sides of the outer periphery.

"I have no idea how many feet of track I have," said Throckmorton with a laugh as he points beneath the platform to a massive network of electrical wire. "I must have about 100 coal cars."

One area of the model railway is a coal yard complete with coal hoppers waiting to be filled at the tipples. A coal car could hold 50 tons of coal.

The trains are all N-scale, "9 millimeters from rail to rail," but Throckmorton also has an 11-foot section of HO-scale track he uses to test engines for a friend, which includes hand-built models of the Corita Kent-painted Boston Gas tanks and Sandwich power plant.

"I’ve always loved trains," said Throckmorton. "I started model railroads in my father’s attic when I was 13 years old; that would be 70 years ago. It was all Lionel and American flyer, the N-gauge didn’t exist."

Service in the Navy, college and graduate school, marriage, three children and an engineering career at Raytheon sidetracked Throckmorton’s hobby for some years.

"In the 1960s I got back into it. We had a railroad in the basement when the kids were little, but as they got older it had to make room for a ping pong table and then a pool table," said Throckmorton who retired in 1988. "When the kids moved out, I moved in with my railroad, but it was pretty small scale in the 1970s and 1980s."

In 1994, on a trip to Florida with wife Sylvia, Throckmorton met another model railroad enthusiast, Dan Zugelter of Vero Beach.

"He hadn’t yet built his railroad, but he had beautiful buildings he’d built. He did the Chesapeake and Ohio too and I got to be friends with him," said Throckmorton. "At that point I joined the Chesapeake and Ohio Historical Society and have been with it ever since."

He and Zugelter often compare notes, and the friends recently spent a week together repairing engines and track.

"I have no idea how much time I spend, I like to work 24 hours a day," said Throckmorton. "I just enjoy working with my hands and building things."

Throckmorton builds everything by hand, carefully painting each piece and placing it in its historically-accurate location for the Hinton and Thurmond scenes. He details the engines down to the placement of the rivets and the Chesapeake and Ohio decals, and installs working lights, a speaker and decoder to run the sound and motor.

"The whole area is 1953. I chose that year because I could put steam engines and diesel engines on the same layout," said Throckmorton. "It’s all Chesapeake and Ohio because my father worked for them from 1920 to 1960. My dad started as a fireman with the Pere Marquette in Michigan and Chesapeake and Ohio bought them out. He shoveled 20 tons of coal a day. They needed coal in the firebox to make steam so the engines could move."

Throckmorton’s father became an engineer and eventually a supervisor.

"I remember meeting my father one time when he was doing a switching job," said Throckmorton. "He said, ‘Come on,’ and I climbed up into the cab and rode around with him for maybe half a day."

Throckmorton, who moved to Sudbury 56 years ago, was recently painting his sons’ room when he found some old pencil notations on the wall.

"We used to have tracks and trains not 50 yards from the house. My boys had written down the times they heard the trains go by," said Throckmorton. "I wish kids today did model trains. Too many of them don’t know how to use their hands. It’s something I’ve always loved and enjoyed working on."

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