Katy doctor caught train bug at an early age
Rails of a miniature train track loop around Dr. Mark Bing’s Katy home off Morton Road, cutting through the trees and leading to a white barn behind the house.
“Welcome to Elm Street Station,” Bing said, sitting on a knee-high model steam engine whose cars stretched back into the barn.
The 63-year-old doctor of internal medicine grew up in Katy when the freight cars that passed through town were primarily filled by cattle ranchers and rice farmers. Every late February, he saw flat cars loaded with farming implements roll past as manufacturers brought in the latest tools they hoped to sell at the Katy FFA Livestock Show and Rodeo.
“I thought I wanted to be a steam engineer,” he said of his childhood. “But then it occurred to me, ‘There are no more steam engines.’ It was all diesel electric. So, basically it didn’t occur to me do anything else with railroads.”
Nonetheless, his fascination remained.
At night, he would wake up to watch the cars pass his family home on Morton Ranch Road, where he again lives today. His parents feared he would try to get close for a better view at the cars that ran past their house; so they built a backyard fence. While attending medical school in Guatemala years later, he crossed coast-to-coast by train.
Back in Katy, his early dream to work on the railroad led him to a Houston-area group of train enthusiasts and historians. At their encouragement, he started to build model steam-powered trains and eventually refurbished a
full-size passenger car that he now uses to run tours around the country, from Chicago to Seattle to Oakland to Houston.
Bing credits a series of family trips from his childhood with fostering his interest in trains.
When Bing was 10 years old, his dad recruited other Katy families to travel by train to the 1962 Seattle World’s Fair. With enough people signed up, they were able to reserve a passenger car to themselves.
“Jim Rhode had gone down and filled a pickup truck with watermelons. He iced them in the back of the car,” Bing remembered.
The car “full of Katy characters” worked its way up to Dallas then Denver, where they had a layover.
“We got out and went to the farmers market and brought back loads of cherries and peaches. I had never had cherries.”
The train continued to Portland, through the Cascade Mountains to Seattle and the World Fair before tracing the same route home.
Bing laments that many of his friends and hobby train mentors have either passed away or become too busy with grandkids to travel or build much anymore. He, too, admits that he hasn’t spent as much time at Elm Street Station as he once did.
“It got out of hand,” he repeatedly says whenever asked about his train hobby.
He is quick to note that his wife, Natalie, who wanted to live on five acres, sold him on the idea of moving back into his childhood home by saying she would let him build the track around the property’s edge.
“She convinced me to come here so we’d have a place for people to come, run trains, do Boy Scouts and have a good time,” he said. “We’ve done all of those things. We’ve had lots of people. We’ve had lots of Boy Scouts. It’s just hard to do all the time.”
Walking into the shadowy barn filled with rows of model train cars, Bing points as he describes each one: Black oil tankers. Wood-slatted livestock cars. A freight car in the signature sunshine yellow of the MKT railroad, from which the city of Katy gained its name. He steps over wagon cars, designed to carry visitors around his track, as he makes his way to the workshop on the other side of the barn.
Tools, parts and manuals cover the shelves and tabletops. Model engines are parked, waiting to be refurbished or repaired.
These days Bing has more projects than he has time for. He hasn’t yet completed the yearly maintenance on the tracks that loop around his house, which are covered with leaves, sticks and other natural debris.
“The heat causes the rails to move, to walk, and gravel just disappears into the ground,” he said. “So every year, you have to make a big effort to go back through and rebuild the line. Ties rot out eventually. You have to take a machete to the trees. There’s gallons of Round Up. Not quite as much fun.”
Nonetheless he expects to get started on it all soon.
“As work slows down and we get into the summer, I’ll have time to start working again,” he said. “Get all this stuff tuned back up.”