Model trains and accessories filled the Historic Railpark and Train Museum on Saturday, Feb. 22 as the sHOw Modular Model Railroad Club hosted the 24th annual spring Model Train Show. The event had around 60 tables of model trains and accessories from local vendors, including the 25 members of the sHOw Modular Model Railroad Club itself.
According to their Facebook, the sHOw Modular Model Railroad Club is a community for model train collectors and enthusiasts. Members come together and host local events and operate a permanent layout track at the museum.
Bowling Green native and club member Michael Dowell said they use proceeds from events to advance model railroading in the community. Proceeds also go towards traveling to other events across the greater Kentucky area. In the past, they have traveled to Kennesaw, Georgia for an event at the Southern Museum.
Dowell said the club is open for memberships from anybody interested. He said it is important that younger generations keep this hobby alive.
“There for a while, it was an older generation but younger guys are starting to like trains too,” Dowell said. “So the hobby is changing a little bit, but it’s good to see young people in it.”
The event attracted people of all ages, from retirees to young adults to parents, and even to kids and students.
12-year-old Declan McAfee from Bowling Green, one of the vendors at the Model Train Show, said he’s the youngest member of the club. He said he has been collecting model trains since he was three years old and is excited for his future of collecting and learning more about the tools and electrical equipment used.
“There are people out there who’ve been doing this for like 50 years and they have massive collections,” McAfee said. “I’m just beginning on that, but I’m hoping to get bigger at this as I have different careers.”
McAfee said a lot of his collection comes from hobby shops, but mainly from online shopping. He said he can find stuff cheap online, come to train shows, sell them, make money and buy new things.
Being in seventh grade, McAfee said he has also devoted time to building more communities with model railroad lovers his age. At his co-op homeschool group, he started his own model railroad club, inspired by the sHOw Modular Model Railroad Club.
“I got the idea and added it to my school because the people there love decorating,” McAfee said. “I was like, ‘Hey, I can incorporate this to my hobby, and it can make everybody happy.’”
This past December, McAfee said the club got together and did a modular set-up in the Greenwood Mall. Here, everybody decorated their track section, put them all together and ran trains around it.
In the opposite generation, Eddie James is 89 years old and said he’s been a vendor each of the 24 years the Model Train Show has run at the museum. James said he has been surrounded by model trains his entire life. His dad gave him his first train for Christmas in 1939 when he was four years old.
“There are eight men that began the Railroad Club in Owensboro in fall of 1956, and I am the last survivor of those eight men,” James said.
He said because he’s from Owensboro, he’s not a member of the sHOw Modular Model Railroad Club in Bowling Green. However, he still is a part of the respective railroad club in Owensboro, where they have about 50 members.
With our changing world, the community around model trains is also changing. Mills Poston, a 26-year-old member of the club, said the environment and spaces surrounding model trains are different than they used to be when he was growing up. However, he said the environment is still very much alive and active.
Potson said the avenues in which people can come together around model trains are also developing to social media sites to connect people from wider audiences, including Twitter, Facebook, and Discord. Poston also said the advent of 3-D printing is a great tool to make your models.
“A lot of people think the hobby is dying but it’s not; it’s like caterpillars going into butterflies,” Poston said. “It’s not the same as it once was in the ’90s and early 2000s, but that’s just time.”