Once I built a railroad . . .

Well, actually, it was a model railroad, built on a sheet of 4x8 feet plywood that took up nearly a quarter of our son's bedroom. He was then about ten years old.

The locomotives, two of them, were built from metal kits by Tyco. Took me about a week to get the engines looking right, including painting a weathered look to them. Made the roadbed of a cork-like material, then laid the track on the plywood, which had been set on folding legs. Tiny nails were the rail spikes. Had pretty good eyesight then.

After the track was laid, and the switches, sidings, level crossings and other features were in place, my son and I did the messy landscaping with a plaster-of-Paris-like material called Hydrocal, using crumpled newspaper forms and strips of brown paper from grocery bags soaked in the Hydrocal and laid over the forms. We had a small hill through which a tunnel ran, trees made of twigs and rubbery lichen bought from a hobby shop, and finally buildings, including a hotel, a factory, several houses, a gas station, all from plastic kits that we glued, and then painted to give them that weathered realistic look. The tunnel entrance was a plaster cast that looked pretty darn good.

Rolling stock we bought ready-made from the hobby shop: hoppers, tank cars, box cars, a caboose, reefers. The hill was painted in varied earth tones and given a brownish green coating of a sawdust-like material to resemble spots of grass.

The power came from a small controller with a dial that regulated the speed of the locomotive, and had forward and reverse. For a kit-built locomotive, our 2-8-2 Mikado was a fine workhorse as it pulled a mixed lot of rolling stock round and round with a delightfully steady whir past the little village and through the tunnel.

In the end we disposed of our railroad through a want ad in the local paper, but my son has continued his interest in model railroading into adulthood and now has a stable of highly detailed brass locomotives in his collection. It's a fine hobby, this model railroading. Once bitten with the bug as a kid, you never let it go.

Once I built a railroad, I made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad, now it's done --
Brother, can you spare a dime?


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