By Elizabeth Cloutman
Railway society tour features Los Altos model railroaders
Whether you love recalling the pleasures of traveling by rail or just want to learn more about the history of trains, you’ll find something to enjoy at the Bay Area Garden Railway Society’s 2002 regional meet. The event features a self-guided tour of scale-model railroad displays at 80 open houses.
The tour, scheduled for July 25-28, includes model railroad displays in the homes of eight Los Altos aficionados.
“One of the main missions of a museum is to educate as it entertains visitors,” said longtime resident Fred Vertel, who hopes tour participants will gain a greater appreciation of the railroad’s contributions. Vertel and his son, Tom, maintain the Montebello Ridge Garden Railroad Museum in their home.
The regional meet also features a centerpiece permanent exhibit of the Los Altos History Museum: the 25-foot scale-model replica of downtown Los Altos in 1932. Traveling through the display is a miniature version of the Southern Pacific steam-engine train that carried commuters between San Jose and Palo Alto. The railway ran along what later became Foothill Expressway.
The museum display, completed last year, is the vision of the Vertels, and a third Los Altos enthusiast Bob Brown. Tom designed and maintains the Southern Pacific railway layout. Brown constructed the building replicas and designed the scenery, which includes 21 animated figures.
The Vertels’ home-based museum is a train lover’s paradise - from attic to basement and filling the back yard. Fred’s love for trains began when he was a boy in LaGrange, Ill., where his father was a welder, working on diesel trains.
Tom is the only one of his parents’ four children who is as passionate as his father, perhaps even more so, about model railroads. He has been able to make a profession of his talents. Tom recreates layouts for other model railroaders. He also maintains the displays at the Train Mountain Museum in Oregon.
After Fred retired from his career as a stockbroker in the late 1980s, the two became more and more involved in model railroads. The results are amazing.
Outside, there are more than 1,000 feet of track. Model trains wind through tunnels, passing through cascading waterfalls and miniature trees. A half-scale replica of a Civil War era locomotive, the “Louise,” sits on a diorama featuring a water tank and an old log cabin station.
Among the many exhibits inside are a “Dickens’ Christmas” display; a model recreation of the Golden Spike Ceremony, when the transcontinental railroad lines were joined in Promontory, Utah; and a dining table set for six with a blue china service commissioned in 1927 for the centennial of the Baltimore and Ohio, the first U.S. railroad.
Brown has published the Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette, a model railroad magazine with readers in 23 countries, for the past 27 years. His home includes a 28-by-30-foot model of the Sierra and Logging Railroad, which had a tourist line running to Lake Tahoe. The display, first created in 1980, features a hotel by the lake, mines and stamp mills. “Every part has been rebuilt at least once,” Brown said in April 2000. “The fun for me is building (models), not playing with them.”
For the regional meet, Brown will exhibit for the first time a garden railway, which he built in his back yard this year.
The cost for the entire regional meet - which includes a guidebook to all open houses, special ID badges, door prizes and a barbecue at Ardenwood Farms - is $60 for participants, age 11 and older, before July 1, $70 after that date; $40 for children, ages 5-10. To participate in the entire event, you must register by July 15.
To register, send your name, complete address, phone number, e-mail address, and names of all participants, with ages of children to Fred Vertel, Chairman, WCRE 2002, P.O. Box 3772, Los Altos, CA 94024-0772.
Make checks payable to BAGRS Regional Event 2002.
For more information, e-mail Fred at ftvertel@aol.com.
