Rekindling childhood memories with model trains
‘Taking something out of your mind and putting it onto a table in a smaller form'
AMHERST — Darren Landry loves the realism that comes with working on his model trains.
“It's taking something out of your mind and putting it onto a table in a smaller form and making it as accurate and lifelike as possible,” Landry said.
Landry is president of the Cumberland Area Railway Club that has seen its membership grow from just six a little over a year ago to 30.
Ron Furlong said the concept of the club began a couple of years ago when Dan Read, a newcomer to Amherst, approached him about establishing the club and serving as its secretary. At the time, there was hope of hosting a train show at the Cumberland County Museum, but it ended up being moved to the First Baptist Church downtown and the club took off from there.
The club moved to the Amherst Center mall in December 2019 to do a show and stayed.
“One of the things we're trying to do is help increase traffic in the mall,” Furlong said. “It's good for us in that it gives us a home and after COVID we'll be hosting a number of shows and open houses. It's good for the mall in that it attracts people.”
Furlong got his start in the hobby when he was around 14 and he had a small layout in his home.
“I love the building, the creating. It's the realization of a scene in your head and putting it together,” Furlong said.
Landry said his father had a lot to do with falling in love with trains. He was a marketing manager for Co-op Atlantic. He remembers him buying a bunch of train sets that had been returned for various reason. They'd put them together and diagnose and fix any problems they came across.
“It grew from our kitchen floor, to a four-by-eight piece of plywood, to taking up an entire room in the basement, to 375 square feet in my attic,” Landry said. “I've been at it a long time, at least 30 years.”
He said his passion for model railroading helped get him through the COVID lockdown. He went to work on a massive module that resembles downtown Amherst, including an old Acadian Lines bus and the highway exit for Aulac. He also built a replica of the Irving refinery in Saint John and has some buildings that can be seen near his home in Memramcook.
“It's hard to model a specific area where there are so many buildings, especially
“One of the things we’re trying to do is help increase traffic in the mall, it’s good for us in that it gives us a home and after COVID we’ll be hosting a number of shows and open houses. It’s good for the mall in that it attracts people.” Ron Furlong
those with old architecture. When you're looking to buy model kits it can be hard to find replicas of the architecture, so you have to improvise quite a bit,” Landry said.
One of the things he loves about the club is the diversity of the members. Some people love building modules while others like to work on the locomotives and the other pieces of each layout.
The group is also impressed with the reaction in the community. Landry sees the club continuing to grow.
“We had a young boy come back eight times during our last open house. A lot of the kids who come in will look at everything,” Landry said.
Stewart Thompson of Warren has provided much of the wood that's used in the modules. He picked up the interest more than 25 years ago from a family member who had a layout. His biggest love is building.
“I love doing the layout and putting together the scenery,” said Thompson, whose module is of the Atlantic Wall in the Second World War in northern France. It includes an attacking fighter plane and paratroopers as well as a V-2 rocket on the launchpad and a large artillery piece hidden in a mountain.
“We have a pretty diverse group of model railroads here. It's pretty amazing.”
Murray Mccormick of Oxford is the only professional railroader in the group. He works for CP Rail and has spent a lot of time out west. He started the hobby in the early 1980s. His great uncle was the station agent at Debert during the Second World War. He remembers, as a kid, chasing the caboose along the tracks.
Graham Bales' love of trains began during the heart of the Second World War. He loves tinkering with the locomotives.
“I remember as a boy we had a pond that we'd play hockey on. When we got too cold we'd go into the barn where I had a train layout. We'd play with it for a while until we were warm and then go back out to the pond to play more hockey,” Bales said.
His module includes a 1926 locomotive.