the roughest rough draft of a profile on KMRHS

I know this needs a lot of work. It has a little bit of an identity crisis going on right now, due in no small part to the fact that I'm pretty sure I haven't gotten the actual story here yet. I have plans to keep going back until I do, however.

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"Model railroading is a hobby that, once people get interested in it, especially like say if they're older than thirteen and they're interested in it, they tend to stay interested in it their entire lives," Mark Tomlonson tells me, over a can of pop (his) and a bottle of water (mine). We're sitting in the workroom-slash-library-slash-office of the Kalamazoo Model Railroad Historical Society. Despite the rain outside, the light coming into the room is bright. The air smells of the paint Mark was using on model train cars when I arrived.

The Kalamazoo Model Railroad Historical Society is really difficult to find. Located on Riverview Drive, to the north and east of Kalamazoo proper, reaching it involves driving through the small town of Parchment, Michigan, past a series of pre-fab houses with dirt-cheap rent and beautiful mansions alike, past Triple H, an airfield where stunt planes fly in twice a year, to a blink-and-you'll-miss-it driveway located in the middle of a sharp bend in the road. The first time I drove out to KMRHS, I missed it once. The last time I drove out, I missed it twice.

The driveway is long, marked only by a wooden contraption reminiscent of a hanging tree with a hand-lettered sign on top reading simply "KMRHS." The building at the end is unassuming, save for the large red caboose parked just outside, behind a transplanted Railroad Crossing warning post. It has been the home of the Society since 1971, when the Kalamazoo Model Railroading Club moved out of its 20-year home in founding member Maury Highler's basement.

Inside the main entrance, however, is a true work of art: just over 212 feet of track laid out in a 20 feet by 40 feet area. There are tunnels and mountains, cities and shipping yards. Every bit of the scenery is accurate up to the year 1960 – hence the historical in the title of this organization – and all the trains are connected to a digital command center that helps coordinate everything. There are multiple towns, stations, and yards scattered about the layout, and during operating sessions, up to seven trains can run at once. The trains they use are on the popular HO scale, meaning that every inch of track on this layout represents 87 inches, or just over seven feet, of actual real-life trains.

Scattered around the layout are tiny little scenes, almost like the Easter eggs found in many computer games and DVD menus. Visitors are encouraged to take a slip of paper from a stack sitting by the wall. Each paper has a blurb reading "The Cooper Park & Eastern is filled with 'mini-scenes'. How many of these can you find? Some of them will take a bit of detective work, but all are in plain sight," followed by a randomized list of ten possible scenes, including the favorite of many members, "The 'Bare' Hunter," a scene where a bear is standing by a hunter squatting over a log with his pants down, and my personal favorite, "Movie Set," where a crowd of people surrounds a Marilyn Monroe figurine – skirt, of course, flying up – standing next to a pink Cadillac.

I email ahead of time to make sure that coming in during one of their work sessions is okay; Russ Barr, the webmaster, tells me to come on by. When I walk in through the unlocked door and pass through the layout room into the adjoining workroom-slash-library, with its paint station, fridge full of pop, and shelves full of books on the history of both model railroads and actual railroads, and full collection of Trains, Model Railroader, and Railroad Model Craftsman magazines, however, everyone is surprised to see me. Russ has forgotten to tell them that I am coming.

They are still flexible, however, so once Mark finishes with his current coat of paint, I sit down with him. He's the treasurer and librarian for the Society. An unassuming man with dark hair, I find out quickly that he is the chief engineer for WMUK when he's not with the trains and literally making sure that the Society – and the track – keep running. I start to suspect that he has a sneaky sense of humor when he tells me about the Amish romance novels his sister writes; my suspicions are confirmed by the railroad history stories he chooses to tell me throughout our interview.

He's also seriously into model railroads. When I ask him how he became interested in model trains, he says, "No idea. I, you know, I – the very first house I lived in, up to the age of 2 and a half, was just a couple hundred yards from a railroad track, and I think that might have something to do with it. But I have no idea what it's like to look at a train and not be interested in it." Later, I will ask if his family has any factor in his interest, and he will tell me that his "dad was interested in helping me, but he wasn't interested with trains."

This lifelong fascination with trains, though apparently the norm – he and David Hayes-Moats, the president of the club who joins us halfway through the interview, both have it. David tells me that he's "always liked trains." Even though he's had periods in his life where he has not been actively involved in model railroading, the fascination has lingered. The same seems to be true of the club's youngest member, a 15-year-old boy who has taken the narrow-gauge track on the layout on as his personal project and completed it, now running that track exclusively during operating sessions. He's been a member for several years, apparently, and is passionate and dedicated.

Russ Barr, webmaster, sits down with us after he finishes painting scenery behind the track that runs through the bathroom. His story is different – although "I had a train set when I was a kid, managed to destroy it pretty good," he didn't really become interested in trains "until my wife dragged me to a hobby show, said I didn't have enough hobbies. I disagreed, but I kind of liked the challenge and a couple of the guys I met – we were really comfortable to talk to, so I built a small layout and joined the club, then abandoned the small layout because I've got a big one here."

However people come to model railroads, the hobby demands a lot of commitment once they become involved. "The most expensive part of model railroading is the time," Mark tells me. Although good HO cars cost about $50 each, with locomotives at around $100, it takes hours to keep trains going. The society has 37 regular members, ranging in age from 15 to 93; the average member puts in at least five hours a week, making sure the track is clean enough, that the electrical wiring is in order, painting cars, making sure the engines are running right, and setting up operating sessions, where a lot of members come together to run the trains based on a set schedule. Every month, the Kalamazoo Model Railroad Historical Society has five set work sessions for maintenance, one business meeting, and two operating sessions.

The operating sessions are very regimented. Trains are set to run on a schedule, departing certain stations at certain times, picking up and dropping off "loads," like flour, at various train yards and in various cities. Some people man the train yards, switching cars and sending trains out at certain times. Some man specific trains, running them from one station and town to the next. One person is always the dispatcher, telling others when they are permitted to go and helping make sure that there are no collisions between trains. Each member possesses a small, leather-bound rulebook with some hundred-odd rules that detail what exactly proper behavior is, for every conceivable manifestation of model railway usage. These rules range what things train operators can say during an operating session (and how that changes if there are observers who are not members in the society) towhich cars can be historically accurately hooked up to which engines and the preferred electrical wiring configurations of the track. The first rule in the book is that model railroads should be fun, and that everyone is to ensure that the experience remains fun.

Still, during our interview, I get the same impression that I got the first time I stepped into the world of model railroading – a train show at the Kalamazoo Expo Center during the last week of October last fall: the honest-to-God point of this society is the sense of community that members get. New members have a probationary period before they become full members of KMRHS, to make sure that they get along with everyone. It's imperfect – at the operating session I attended, two members got into an argument over how fast one member was running his train – but I do not get the impression that the glitches in the system are truly a problem. After all, as Mark tells me, "It's nice to pay the monthly dues just to have some place to go and talk about trains where people don't look at you funny."