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Community Corner

Ellicott City Station Holiday Train Display Right on Track

An Ellicott City tradition for over 20 years, volunteers are hard at work to ready the display for the thousands of expected visitors.

By the time he is finished, Tony Zingarelli of Perry Hall estimates he will attach nearly 1,500 scale model trees to the train layout being built for the Holiday Festival of Trains display at the Ellicott City B&O Railroad Station Museum.   

As he has done for the last twelve years, he began the work in early August along with fellow model train enthusiasts Tom Sellars of Catonsville and Larry Harrington of Kingsville, fellow members of the Wednesday Night Train Club of Maryland.  Their first job was to build the multi-level plywood platform that covers about a 20 foot by 30 foot area of the museum’s Car House, where full size steam engines were repaired in bygone days.

Then the creative part began.

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Tom Sellars says proudly of the work, “We don’t use drawings or plans.”  Instead, the men rely on their decades of combined experience at building model train layouts to create a design that will delight young and old alike.  First, the intertwining track beds are put in place and the track is laid down.  A framework of thin cardboard strips is placed on the platforms, to be covered with papier-mâché made from newspaper.  Zingarelli then covers these man-made hills with sheets of medical gauze, the type used for making casts.  This sturdy material can be easily shaped and molded into lifelike crevices and rock outcroppings.  They estimate they will use six cases of the material to build their model mountains.

Once the hills and mountains are created, the landscape is spray painted over in realistic earth colors, and Zingarelli starts to apply the first of his 1,500 trees, the shrubs, gravel, dirt and ground-cover.

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The Ellicott City display will have as many as fourteen tunnels for the trains to disappear into, reappearing as if by magic elsewhere.  Nine to ten O-scale trains will be running, passenger and freight, old fashioned steam engines and modern diesels.  Amazingly, this complex setup is run by four ZW manual controllers in the corner of the room.

 “Despite what many visitors think, this display is not computer operated,” Sellars remarked.

The display has been carefully configured this year with smaller children in mind.  Sellars noted that the topmost levels are hard to see, so structures and model cars are placed at the outer edges so that they can be seen by younger visitors.  Also this year they have created a lower platform for the handmade model trestle that carries trains over the river so that it will be directly at a child’s eye level. The museum will also have a separate Thomas the Tank Engine layout, a favorite of young children, and they may also be able to visit with Santa and Frosty the Snowman on select weekends.

It will require nearly 750 volunteer hours to complete the Holiday Festival of Train display.  The model trains and boxes of buildings, figurines and foliage have been graciously donated for the past few years by the display’s sponsor, Williams Electric Trains by Bachmann.

The Williams trains are a favorite among model train hobbyists who like the more traditional model trains layouts.

According to the Museum’s director, Travis Harry, the Holiday Festival accounts for about 60 percent of the total number of yearly visitors.  The revenue from the Holiday Festival will subsidize many of the museum’s upcoming educational and school programs, such as the commemoration of the 150th Anniversary of the Civil War and Maryland’s part in it, which will start in April, 2011.

Visitors are also welcome sight for the merchants of Ellicott City as they stop in at restaurants and do their holiday shopping.

Every year the group tries to install a new surprise for visitors who have made it a family tradition to visit the Holiday Festival of Trains.  Last year’s was a model of a 1950’s style drive-in, complete with a working video screen showing a Bugs Bunny short.  So far in this year’s display, one new element is a working model of a helicopter at the top of a large hill.  Sellars and Zingarelli say that because they don’t plan it in advance, even they aren’t sure yet what the big surprise will be, but they guarantee one.

“People will just have to come and see,” Sellers said with a smile.

 

Holiday Festival of Trains at Ellicott City Station

When:  November 26, 2010 - January 30, 2011  

Wednesday - Sunday (11:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m.)

Where:  2711 Maryland Avenue Ellicott City, MD 21043   

Phone:   410-461-1945 

 

 

 

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