Playing with Trains by Sam Posey

I am taking a break between reading books 9 and 10 in the
Amelia Peabody
Egyptian mystery novels* to read a delightful autobiography called
Playing with Trains – A Passion Beyond Scale by Sam
Posey (2005, Random House). Posey is a retired race car driver
and sportscaster who writes with humor about his long fascination
with model trains. Here is how the book opens:

“I’m pregnant,” my wife, Ellen, said, and right then I knew I would
be building a train layout.

I originally bought this book for my husband John for whom trains are
also a source of lifelong fascination. (We don’t have
a garage anymore, we have a 2-level HO-scale model train layout room.
Our swimming pool has recently been replaced by a 45′ 1:1 scale
train track, soon to be graced with a 1916 caboose.) John enjoyed
Posey’s book so much, I am reading it now.

Posey describes his own passion for model trains but also gives a
history of the hobby, including photos of his own layout and some of
the most famous work by legendary modellers John Allen, Ned Swigart,
Jim Hediger, Bob Hayden, Tony Koester, George Sellios, Dave Frary,
and Malcolm Furlow. Part One of the book mostly covers the
author’s research, design and construction of his own Colorado Midland,
which has been written about several times in Model Railroader
magazine. There are loving descriptions of how to create mountains
with blue foam and sheet rock patching compound. He casually mentions
using mortician’s wax to stick down the tiny people on his layout.
The rest of the book branches out to discuss operations and
different aspects of this complex and long-lived hobby.

For example, here is Posey writing about the different styles of two
famous master modellers:

It was intriguing to think that Tony Koester’s left-brain,
buttoned-down, historically unimpeachable re-creation of the Nickel
Plate was being built at the same time as the Ferrocarril de Rio
Mantanas. Tony wants to turn model railroading into a game with
rules. Malcolm, by contrast, thinks of it as a highly personal
means of expression, with no rules.

Posey’s writing is fun and easy to read. Here he is
describing Tony Koester’s own writing in Model Railroader:

The column was a pulpit, and the subjects of the sermons were the
manifold joys, the purity, and the sheer righteousness of operation.
To Tony, you were either an operator and loved operation or you
were cast into the netherworld of scenery makers, doomed to wander
the earth as a lost soul.

Even if models and trains are not your own fascination, this book is
worth reading.

* by Elizabeth Peters