 You are at the Sheboygan County Historical Museum and it is March 16th, 2013 and we are taking a look at model railroading today. We have lots of things that will be very interesting for all ages, young and old. We are very privileged to have Mark and Marv Pressler who are master railroaders and that is quite a distinction and they will tell you a little bit more about that. They have some slideshows of some master layouts that are around the country and then we also have a group that comes to set up our trains for us on holiday memories and they are going to be helping young and old to put together a train track and to put some things with the train track. So that should be kind of interesting. They are also an opportunity to make a wooden caboose or a wooden locomotive. Then we also have John Brown who is here and has a number of the very old standard gauge trains and many of them are very, very valuable and interesting to take a look at. We also have some trains that are in a suitcase and those are Maggie Huskies and she also has I think it's a Z layout. Then Ron Clunk has some HO layout that he has and we have a train track set up that you will be able to see. Ken Bailey will be cartooning a scene of a railroad during the time that we are here today and he has cartooned many different scenes of railroads and he also has had a number of them published in publications. Then we also have the society of model railroaders from Sheboygan here. They have the museum in our town and they have set up some different gauges too. And somebody from Danny Ostring makes trees out of actually a weed and he has many trees that he will showcase and then he also will give people the opportunity to make a tree if they would like to. We have Brad Bartek who has made a number of trestles and he is displaying some of his trestles. So we have lots to see, lots to learn and it will be an interesting time to see the different kinds of gauges of trains that we have in our community. We also have Jerry Thompson who has some displays that he is also showing. So it should be a nice day and we hope that you enjoy it as much as we are. I also would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to our new director. We are very pleased to have him on board. He has been a volunteer and he is on the board of directors for our museum. So Travis would you like to come in? So we are very happy that he is going to be a part of our museum and we are looking forward to working with him. I think it was 1957. I was about 10 years old and I got my first train and of course it came on Christmas like so many of the guys here and so many families and it is just really such a holiday tradition. If you get a train most likely it is going to be a Christmas time. The one I got then in about 1957 was a Marx train and that one is gone but this one I got in the 1980s. Just a real fun train. It runs nice and easy and smooth and just great fun at Christmas time and now I get it out for the grandchildren. Good morning. My name is Mark Preisler. I am a master model railroader, an NMRA member from Sheboygan, Wisconsin. I earned a certificate back in 2010 from the National Model Railroad Association. My brother Marvin also earned a certificate. He beat me to the punch in 2009 actually. So that brotherly competition continues I suppose. I have been involved with model railroading and I guess starting out with model trains all the way back to the early 1970s so roughly 40 years now. My dad was the one who got my start in it. He had a Lionel 027 railroad at the time that he would just set up at the holiday season. My mom and dad had a bar room in the basement and the train would just come out during the holidays as a display. The layout would be packed away of course after Christmas time, after the holidays and it would go back to a ping-pong table which was part of the rec room. I got my start with that moving on to about 1978, got into HO scale railroading. I would have been about 12, 13 years old at the time. Of course that's when your creativity kind of takes off and you begin reading books a little more and whatever. Through all that I wound up getting interested in HO scale. My dad wasn't really in favor of it at the time. He was happy with the Lionel display at Christmas. But after my whining and begging I suppose he broke down and we switched into HO scale and then my dad became a full-time model railroader as well. Shortly thereafter my brother who was about three, four years younger than I am he joined us and soon we were off on a model railroad journey I guess you would say. Several people in Sheboygan were really critical in our development as model railroaders and eventually earning that master certificate. Of course my dad Merlin got us the start. Other people as we went on of course he had to learn as well and her voice in Sheboygan here was our mentor. He had learned from a fellow by the name of Casey Buttein who was his mentor. So in kind of a weird sort of way the generations pass on interest in model trains and trains in general. The layout that I have now fills basically a 25 by 45 foot area. I model the Sioux line in 1955 between Wapaka and Oshkosh basically. My brother's layout, separate house of course. He's modeling the Green Bay and Western from the late 80s and early 1990s. We both I guess have achieved a little bit of skill in the hobby through the years. And have been published in various magazines. Model Railroad Magazine being the I guess the biggest one in the world for the hobby. And I was I guess honored to be featured in that as their featured layout in July of 2009. As far as the future goes with the hobby well you know that's part of the reason we're here today I guess to show what could be done with the hobby. We've got everything from toy trains on the carpet all the way up to you know realistic HO scale full-size basement layouts I suppose you would say. And of course the new electronics have really changed the way people think about the hobby. There are things now that I do with my model railroad and my layout that would have been impossible to do back 30 even 10 years ago for that matter in some cases. So it's not really a stagnant hobby there are a lot of people in Sheboygan that are into model trains. Most of them don't have maybe quite the extravagant setup of an entire basement. But you don't really need that to you know have fun with the hobby itself. And I guess we're kind of here today to point that out and hopefully I have a good time doing it. Thanks. This train you see here is all registered. Each car is hand-painted and it's through Hawthorne Village. And each car has its own number also. And it's a fun thing to play with but I don't let any of the grandchildren or the niece and nephew's kids play with it. But on the layout we have different setups of houses and businesses and little cars and trucks. And in the corner we have small cows and horses and little people in here. My name is Doug Leonard. One of the Lakeshore old gauges. And we're here running old gauge trains. Basically on the carpet calling it Carpet Central Railroad. And we figured the kids would like it better if we could get it down to some place where they like to play. And the trains are durable enough that little kids can play with them. They take rough abuse fairly well. And we like playing with trains as much as the kids do. So it's a win-win situation for us. And it's a great way to get out, play with our trains, play with the kids. And when I can't get together with my grandkids, this is just fine too. Okay, we're running the Lionel Santa Fe out here with a couple of cars behind it. It's old gauge which is 148 scale or there about. It's probably the first major large-selling scale railroad that came out. HO has gotten a lot bigger than old gauge in the last decade or so. But I like running old gauge because of the size. And it seems to last forever. The engine you see running here is over 50 years old and it runs just fine. It's hard to find another toy that anybody makes that you can say that about. So I started running trains probably back when I was about 7 or 8 years old. My dad bought it for the first Lionel set. And I've been dabbling with it ever since. I've got some of my rolling stock here. Some of the more exciting stuff. Missile cars, satellite cars, things that you can shoot through the air. Because the kids seem to really like that. And it seems like as soon as you start shooting missile cars, you can't run trains anymore because that's all the kids want to see is missiles flying through the air. But it's entertaining. And we like to play with the kids and if that's what the kids want to play with, that's what we go with. Thanks, Brayden. If you want to come by later, we're going to be setting up more track if you want to help us, okay? Awesome. Hey, Brayden, are you good with Lego? You play with Lego bricks? Do you like Lego bricks? Well, can you and Grandpa help us with some of our Lego dinosaurs? Or do you want to walk around a little bit? Alright, why don't you come back later and we'll be here. Hi, my name is Dave Malig. I'm a member of the Lakeshore O'Gage Railroaders. Just a loose association of guys that get together and love trains and run together and have a good time. Today we're going to talk about a little bit what we do and what we share. Here at the museum for holiday memories, we have a modular layout that we set up. It is 40 feet by 12 feet. And some of these black and white pictures show some of the members actively running trains for the museum. My son Alex and the first one. And the second picture is Dave Tauschek. And the last picture is myself. And another picture of my son Alex and I running trains together in the military section. We're having a little army tank babble there. So every year we come during the weekend of Thanksgiving. Since Christmas and trains were synonymous for many, many years, people like to set up trains underneath their Christmas trees, run them around. And the nice thing is to always get that new piece for Christmas that you can open up and put on the track right away. The layout runs on two main lines, all O'Gage, and we have multiple trains that we can run. And we run Lionel's new command system where we can run multiple trains on the same track. The fun thing for us though is to share with the young people who may not know about the hobby. So we allow them to run the trains with us with the new control system. We have some more pictures of the Lakeshore O'Gage ages here at the museum. The top photo is actually myself working on a locomotive that has a little running problem. But you can see some nice action shots of trains running around. And it gives you a good perspective of the entire layout. Our good friend Bill Whirly, who's also a member, comes all the way up from Indiana and comes and runs trains with us. And then on the good group shot towards the bottom of all of us that are members of the group. And we also run very whimsical toys. Some of the trains that we run are very realistic, like we have swimming fish in them that are animated. And other action cars that are based on movie characters like the Disney ones. And those are the ones that my son and I like to collect. So we like the whimsical fun cars. My name is Ken Bailey. I'm a lifelong model railroader and railroad artist and cartoonist. And the man in this picture is Casey Butine. Casey and I were friends for many years. He passed away in the year 2000, just short of his 92nd birthday. Casey was a phenomenal man. When Casey was young, he was part of one of Sheboygan's very first model railroad clubs, the Chair City and Western. A number of men had a layout in the basement of a store downtown. And the size you see here, HO, which stands for half of O scale, in the 1930s was brand new. When World War II came, everybody but Casey was either drafted or enlisted in the war. Because of Casey's health, he couldn't go. And Casey had the job of taking apart and dismantling that model railroad club. But years later, he built a large layout in his basement as is pictured here. Lake Michigan, at one time, had car ferries. And the cars they're talking about were not automobiles but railroad cars. They would take a shortcut across Lake Michigan inside of big boats. You can see in a picture here, the cars would be loaded into the back of the boat. A big door would open up and the engine would push railroad cars in. And that kept the trains from having to go all the way down to the bottom of the lake to Chicago and around the lake. They could shortcut across the lake in this boat. One of the things Casey did years ago, these boats would stop at Manage Walk, about 30 miles north of here. Casey would go to watch them. And then he hand built this operating car ferry boat. He actually had his model railroad tracks connected. His model trains could push the cars into the boat. There were tracks inside the boat and the boat was on a large rolling table. It's behind this piece of wood. Casey planned to build a second, what they would call a car slip, a loading place across his basement. He wanted to load the model railroad cars in his boat, then push the table and the boat across the basement floor and then have another model locomotive unload the boat on the far side. Sadly, he never lived to finish that, but you can see how far he got over here. His layout went all the way around the room. You even had to duck under it when you came in through the door. Casey and I were friends for many years and he was my inspiration. Thank you. Okay, my name is John Brown. I live in Chewagon Falls. And I got a model railroad, but I also collect old trains. And I started collecting and building trains in 1938. And over on a picture on the side over there, they got some of my 1938 layouts. These are standard gauge trains. And the standard gauge was the biggest trains that they made up until World War II. After World War II, none of these trains were made anymore. And I've got a variety of different types of standard gauge down here. These are American Flyer. And I've got an American Flyer engine and the freight train. And then beyond that is American Flyer passenger train. And that one is quite unique because it's called the President Special. And the President Special was made in 1927. So this was a 1927 train. And they quit making trains about 1938 of the standard gauge type. However, they still continue even today making trains. American Flyer now is owned by the Lionel Company. They bought them out. And the trains they make today are called S-Gauge. Okay, these trains are Lionel trains. And these on top here happen to be called the State Set. And the reason they're called the State Set, they have the state on the bottom of the car. And they're quite valuable. One of these trains in the original box just sold for $253,000. So most people didn't buy them because they were very costly even in 1932. And I happen to get this from a doctor's son who lived in Port Washington. And you had to be a doctor, his son, to be able to buy one of these. And this is pretty neat in it. It has all the interior seating. And it also has little restrooms. And the toilet seats even raise up and down. So there aren't too many trains that had interiors to them. And I have, down below here, I have a freight set. And this is a bigger freight set. They have bigger freight cars. They also made a little cheaper standard gauge one. And their cars were a little less. Now one of the cheaper Lionel trains is this passenger Maroon one down near the bottom. And that was their cheapest engine, that little Maroon engine. And those passenger cars. So that was one of their cheaper sets. And this is, and the other ones are bigger sets. The train way in the front here goes back to 1910. And Lionel started about 1903. But that second car is about a 1907 car. And you don't pay them even though they're old because they lose their value. So I collect trains of all sizes and all types. And that's just having to be the biggest bigger sets that I've got. And I've been in a train business since 1938. Hi, my name is Jerry Thompson. I'm at the Sheboygan County Historic was excited today. Showing off some of the modern railroad displays that I have personally built over the years. I've been a modeler for about 50 years. And got involved when I was quite young because the Sulline Railroad used to run right through the middle of our dairy farm. So trains were always in my, as soon as I could pull myself up to the windowsill and look out the window, I was acquainted with trains. But as we evolve in life, I like to think that most modeler railroaders, whether they realize it or not, actually are historians. They actually want to recreate something from their memory or something that they've seen in the form of model railroad and displays. And I've kind of taken my modeling to the next level, I say, because I've actually built models of buildings that actually exist. And this is one that this is a line drawing that a friend of mine put together of the water tower that's actually in the city of Plymouth. And it also stands, it was built in 1886. And it's a very unique water tower. It used to pump water for the Houston house, but it's an enclosed water tower. And that's one of the reasons it's last and still exist today. Most water towers have actually disappeared because Mother Nature is hard on things. So this is a picture of what the water tower actually looks like right now. This is the top portion with the cupola up here. Our historical society would like to restore it and actually have the actual windmill on top of the water tower like it used to be. And so I built a model of the tower the way it appears today. And then we're going to be adding this to it. And the model is a very visual thing that people can wrap their head around their arms around and understand what we're up to. So this is something that will go on the layout for my purposes, but it's an actual historic building in Plymouth. Another building that actually was going to be destroyed is a blacksmith shop. This was built in 1887. And this stood behind the art center in the city of Plymouth. And the art center two years ago decided they wanted to expand. And this building was going to be destroyed. It was going to be taken down because it was in the way. So I and a couple of friends, we actually physically picked up the building and we moved it about a block. We have it up on blocks right now and we're going to restore it. So it is a working blacksmith shop so people can see how a blacksmith actually operated. But I built a model of it so people could see what it would look like. And this model depicts it the way it's sat behind the art center. But these two little additions that were put onto it really weren't unique. They weren't from the 1887, 1886 era. So I built it so that we can take this away. And this is what it'll look like when it's on display for our historical society. And it gives people a pretty good idea of what we're all about. Some of the other models that I have on the table here are models that I built over the years. I'd like to think the moderator is a good therapy. You can sit in the basement at two in the morning and just kind of do your own thing. And the rest of the world kind of goes on by and you don't worry about it. And I tell moderators and people that are in the hobby to do what you like to do. Don't do what you think is going to impress your friends. Your friends are fine, but don't let them dictate what you want to do. You just do what you think you're comfortable with and what you're happy with and call it a day, so to speak. Okay, this was my husband's love. He loved railroads and Jerry designed the layout in a briefcase so it was portable. We could take it along wherever we went. And this is the smallest gauge train that he had. And I helped with the layouts. I was his helper. And it was fun doing. So it proves that ladies can be interested in this as well as men and boys. So Jerry also has had the Engage layout. That was fun to do too. Marklin, isn't it? Huh? Marklin? I believe, yes, my husband was the collector. I was just the helper on the layout, so. Just for having the end scale here that fits on the cart gauge. And it was a lot of fun doing. They were armor balls? No. Oh, there you go. So I do have that yet. Photograph. Okay, we're running a Lionel O-Gauge. The floor system belongs to Margaret Heschke. We're running in a manual type mode. We're not using the remote control or anything. So if we want to run the whistle or the bell or the speed, we just do it manually on the remote control. By pushing this button, we get the whistle to blow. We want to increase the speed on the engine. We just turn the lever up. I modeled the Milwaukee Road O-Gauge in 148 scale in the Hiawatha series, starting with the 442 Atlantic, which was the first steam locomotive in the Hiawatha series. Then being replaced by the 464 Hudson, which was a more powerful engine. And then being replaced by the diesel locomotives, the AMD F7. The Milwaukee Road had very unusual end cars for their locomotives. On the diesels, they had the Sky Lounge, the double dome car. And the very first one was called the Beaver Tail Car. I also model the Milwaukee Road in the steam locomotives also. I have the 261. I have the Pacific Baltic. And I also have the EP2 Bipolar, which was used for going through the tunnels in the mountains. The locomotive we're looking at now belongs to Margaret Heschke. This is the Union Pacific Big Boy, the largest locomotive ever made. This is 129 scale produced by the manufacturer MTH. This is Garden Gauge. The body on the Garden Gauge models are made out of plastic. And in fact we have a few of the Garden Gauge, the Caboose, and the coal car. Garden Gauge people actually set up in their gardens often? Garden Gauge would be outside. It's something we don't put out in winter time. But if you're in a warm climate, you can have it out all year long around here. You can only put it out during the summertime. Hi, my name is Ken Bailey. I'm a model railroader and also a railroad artist, cartoonist, and caricaturist. And railroading, model railroading is a hobby with many different sides. And I'm part of two different groups. The large SSSME society and the next room. One of the fun things about being in a group is each person can bring their particular talents and interests and everybody can benefit. So it's a lot of fun that railroading is also a place where one can also, I can bring my art hobby into the railroading as well. This particular picture was drawn just now. It took about an hour and a half. And it depicts a passenger train from the 1950s stopping at Rangeley, Colorado, which is the town where I grew up and which was ironically on the route of what would someday become the real Grand. But the predecessor railroad building there went bankrupt going over the mountains and never made it. So this is what's called a fantasy shot. It's a what if. Sometimes even people making models will do fantasy models where maybe a railroad has been merged and there's no longer a round and they'll take a modern locomotive and paint it in the colors of the dead railroad as if it were still around. So like many hobbies, model railroading is only constrained by one's own imagination. I started cartooning about age five. It was my grandmother's father. She bought me a chalkboard and some chalk. And trains have always been a favorite hobby. In fact, when I was in the first grade, my first day of second grade, I was told I had drawn so many trains the first year that no trains at all in grade number two. I think I got even. That school was decommissioned in 1983. I'm still drawing trains. Had just a couple published in railroad magazines over the years, maybe 10 different cartoons, but mostly just a hobby. Okay, basically a simple tree to make is the sedum. And the sedum grows in a lot of people's gardens and flower patches. And this is what they are when they're dried out. This is a picture of them when they're in the garden. And basically what I do with them is I spray them with scenic cement, which is watered on umber glue. And get them wet, give them a good dosing. And when I get done, I'll take them and put them in the scenic foam in the bucket. And basically that's the way they come out. And I take hairspray, spray them good with hairspray. And that's all that's to it. Very simple to make. Another one I just made for the first time today. I just made this one for the first time. I went on YouTube and there was a guy on there making them. And I thought they looked pretty realistic. And what it is, is a sage from out west. And it looks pretty natural. And then I use this material that's import from the Netherlands. And I don't know what the name of it is. They call it super tree. And all I do is break pieces off and I stick them down in the sage. Just like that. I just break them off. I pretty much can use the whole sage plant. And once I get enough on, I'll take them and spray scenic cement. Dalsum real good. Because when that dries it will be glued on. And then I use this product from Germany. It's called knock leaves. And all it is is a leafy type flocking. And basically that's what I do with this tree here. It's got the knock leaves on it and the super trees. And I think it looks pretty real. And that's the first one I made. I got the idea off of YouTube. All the trees behind you. I use a varying amount of different products. I have this stuff. It's called poly fiber. And it comes in a big ball. And you take it out and you put it on these. These are plastic armatures that you can buy. And you just put it on there, stretch it out. You can put on as much as you want. And again, spray it down and you can put any flocking on it you want. The ones back there I put knock on. Knock leaves. And you can use regular flocking like this here. Made by Woodland Scenic. There's some labor intensive trees. I use a sage again. And I use this material finely foliage. And it comes like this. And all I do is take it and glue it onto the limbs. And it's pretty much done. Not this one ain't too much work. But the ones on the end down there are made up from a dowel that is tapered. And I put this crepe paper. And I'll cut a piece off. And I'll wrap it around the doweling after it's tapered. And I'll glue them down. And you notice it looks just like bark. And then I'll do one on top of it. Go all the way up to the top. And when it gets done I'll take some burnt umber acrylic paint. And paint the whole thing. And I'll dry brush white on it. And those are called furnace filter. This is the material I use to make the leaves and the bushes. This is what it looks like when I cut it down. You got to take the backing off. And then you take them and split them. Try to work the middle out. And once you think you got it then you just pull it apart. That's about all you do when you take a scissors. Cut it into, well I use these templates that I made. And I just cut like this is the one that's radius. And I cut the furnace filter. And that's your branches. And what I do is stick a screwdriver through the middle. And I take them and then peel them on the dowels. And then I'll spray them down heavily with the scenic cement. And I'll take a, I think it's called conifer. Right here, conifer coarse turf for conifer trees. And I'll sprinkle that all over it. And when I do, I'll probably have seven or eight different sizes going up the tree. So it tapers towards the top. And then I'll spray it all down again with hairspray. And that's how it turns out. And the other ones I just paint the dowel. And then I'll, when that dries, I'll take a trommel tool and drill in holes all the way around the tree. And I take a product like this. Wear foliage branches by JT. And what it is, is small little branches like that. And I'll take some super glue and stick it in the dowel. And those are the back ones there, I think. Yeah, right. And you can put in as many branches as you want. You know, you go out in nature. Some got a lot of branches, some not so much. Some got them on the left side. The right side is very, you know. That's the main thing when you're making trees. It's trying to make it look a little bit like it would in nature. They don't have to be perfect, you know, because there's not perfect trees out there. And one thing, when you plant the trees and you plant them for in like a heavily wooded area, you've got to take your time and put every tree where it looks natural. And one kind of tree doesn't go all over here and one kind of tree over here. They get mixed up. That picture up there is of the layout. And those are all my trees. And I got pines in there and I got some that looked like birch. And I got some that looked like oak, you know. And they're all mixed together. The way the dock would operate is the train would back on and there's loading pockets in each one of the sections of the dock. And then they would open the hopper doors on the bottom of the hopper car and unload the car into the pocket. It operates pretty much the same way that the ore docks do up in superior. And then when they fill the boat, they have, each pocket is controlled by an operator that they load the different sections of the boat at different times to keep the boat from capsizing or tipping. So this is pretty much an idea of how a coal dock would operate or an ore dock on Lake Superior. My name is Leo Schneider. I'm president of the Cheboygan Society of Scale Model Railroad Engineers. We have our railroad museum at the corner of Kenton, Ontario in Cheboygan. We've been in that building since 1993 and we try to maintain an interest in model railroading and the history of model railroading in Cheboygan and the United States. In front of me here we have a display of various antique trains that have been donated to us over the years. We also have a few pieces of modern rolling stock, some kit cars, and we have here four box cars in various scales to demonstrate the various size differences in model trains. Our group has an open house usually twice a year. We've got one coming up second week in April. And the public is very well, very much invited to stop down and come visit us and see what we do.