Train lovers hooked on locomotives

Many people fall in love with trains as kids.

Apparently, several never grew out of that phase, as evidenced by the Great Train Expo at the Phil Long Expo Center in Colorado Springs this weekend.

Take Terry Sharpton. The Colorado Springs man remembers coming to his first train expo 47 years ago.

“I was so small and looking at the big world of trains and I got hooked,” he said.

So hooked, that Sunday he showed off his 101-car model train that was so big it took four miniature locomotives to pull. The train wound lazily through more than 80 feet of intricate landscapes hand-built by his model train club. Each landscape is precise, with Sharpton using pictures of grain elevators in Texas and Kansas to make exact replicas.

The hobby has taken over his house, not to mention his wallet.

“Um, I plead the Fifth,” he said when asked how much he spent on trains. “My wife doesn’t know how much I spend, and I want to keep it that way.”

Although many of these train enthusiasts might have started out as kids, they’ve gotten a bit serious as they’ve grown older. A large train scene built by the Colorado Springs-based Pikes Peak “N” Gineers is protected by a small glass panel and a warning sign tells people to keep their hands off.

“These are not toys,” the sign reads.

“If these were toys, would they cost you $100 to $300 for a locomotive?” asked Mike Peck, superintendent of the club.

“When you break toys, you throw them away. When you break these, you fix them.”

Sure, they’re kind of sticklers about their trains, but they do have their own type of fun.

Peck pointed out his favorite scene where a miniature highway is blocked off and several ambulances and military vehicles dot the area. There’s a large tent and you can’t see what’s going on underneath. This is, what these guys imagine it to be anyway, a scene of an alien hunt like that in Roswell, N.M.

“Go ahead, look closely,” Peck said almost giggling. “I bet you can’t find the alien.”

Sure enough, perched on a mountaintop away from all the action is their tiny alien. Even with him, they’re as accurate as they can be. He’s an Andorian from Star Trek with bright blue skin and blond hair.

Just out front of the scene, of course, is a scale-size model train chugging past.