The Lockheed Martin Recreation Association held its 27th annual Model Railroad Show on Oct. 10-11.

The show started 27 years ago in the small ballroom in the administration building.

The first year the show used about 3,000 square feet of space. This year’s show used about 28,000 square feet of space at LMRA.

The first year the show had about 25 dealer tables, and this year’s show had about 200 dealer tables. This show has become one of the largest train shows in the North Texas area.

This year’s show filled two gyms at the LMRA Center.

One gymnasium contained model railroad layouts, and the other gym was filled with venders selling all sorts of model railroading gear.

There was everything from train tracks to all types of rail cars and engines, from the steam era to diesel.

The model railroad displays were laid out in a rectangular area, with room for the train operator and his assistant to move around in the center.

As you followed the tracks around the layout you saw many different scenes associated with the railroad.

In one segment was a mining camp with a mine shaft and the mining town with the trains going by.

There was also a New England village with a fishing boat in the bay.

At another spot was a miniature sawmill with a pile of logs waiting to be milled and stacks of freshly milled lumber air drying in the sun.

If you look under the open shed, you can see the saw moving back and forth over the logs.

Everything here is built to scale and is operable.

As you walk around the display you come to a Western town complete with a sheriff’s office and cattle running loose along the dirt street.

There is a school house and church here along with a feed store and other buildings.

A little farther along is an electric power station and nearby an eight silo grain elevator with the red and white checkerboard Purina emblem on the site.

Out in front of the silos was a miniature billboard, hand lettered, with “Eat More Chiken” and a couple of Holstein cows in front of it.

What would a railroad be without a repair shop? Here was a shop with two work sheds and several engines and cars sitting on the tracks at the back of the buildings waiting to be repaired.

Each section, consisting of a different scene, was about three feet long and two feet wide with a scene painted on a board standing at the back.

Each scene consisted of buildings, trains, automobiles and people.

You could tell that it took many hours, weeks or even months of work to complete each scene. Some of this represents a lifetime of work for the representative collectors.

All the scenes were connected on tables forming a large rectangle about 25 feet by 14 feet.

A track ran around the complete rectangle with several trains running on it. A train would come by every minute or so.

On one side of the room, Jim Stegall had a large display of circus trains and a large display of circus posters on the wall behind the train display.

Stegall is a member of the Circus Model Builders and gave me four copies of their publication, “Little Circus Wagon.”

Stegall had written some articles in the magazines.

Nearby on the counter was a book titled “The Circus Moves by Rail.”

Another item of interest was a child’s tin lunch box painted like a circus wagon with animals inside and labeled “Barnum’s Animals – 85th Anniversary.”

Remember the animal cookies we used to get in these boxes?

Bob O’Connell had a display of miniature circus wagons and animals he had hand cast from a lead-free metal.

All his circus wagons were pulled by white horses.

Besides the circus wagons, he had a water wagon and a buggy.

Everything here was hand painted. O’Connell was here from Santa Rosa, Calif..

Visit www.mmtoysoldier.com to see his work.

In another gym the dealers were set up.

Here you could purchase anything pertaining to model railroading, from the model train sets, individual cars and engines and buildings to people to give your model train set a look of reality.

You could also buy books on the subject of model railroading.

Some of the vendors were selling railroad memorabilia — from old railroad passes to the old timetables. Other dealers had large art prints of various trains for sale.

One section about fifteen feet square was blocked out, with little plastic track criss-crossing the area and several Thomas the Tank Engines with their cars for the children to play with.

Several children in the area played with the trains.

Across the parking lot from the gym is another building containing the LMRA Railroad Club’s Permanent 1,200 square foot HO-scale layout.

Here they have some of the tracks going around the side of a mountain, also a shop layout with a turntable and roundhouse.

To learn more about LMRA and see more pictures of their permanent model train layout visit www.lmra.org/Activity.aspx?pageid=50.

This was quite a show for any railroad enthusiast.



John Watson is a Cleburne resident who can be reached at texastraveler@sbcglobal.net.