Workin' on the railroad

Train machinist by day, backyard conductor at play

Garden railroader Bernie Alsbrook watches a train round the curve in his backyard in North Little Rock. His wife, Christy, assembled the pieces of this trestle. The Alsbrooks make a joint hobby of their miniature railroad.
Garden railroader Bernie Alsbrook watches a train round the curve in his backyard in North Little Rock. His wife, Christy, assembled the pieces of this trestle. The Alsbrooks make a joint hobby of their miniature railroad.

The biggest railroad layout in North Little Rock belongs to Union Pacific, but one of the biggest little railroads toots around Bernie and Christy Alsbrook's backyard.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The detail on Bernie Alsbrook's trains is extensive.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Tim Lucas and his son, Drew, discover the miniature town of Eagle Eye — a feature of Bernie and Christy Alsbrook’s garden railroad. Drew holds a checklist that Christy gives to visitors. The list tells things to watch for, including buildings and animals, even a hobo camp by the tracks.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

A train leaves the tunnel, part of Bernie and Christy Alsbrook’s garden railroad in North Little Rock. They filled in a backyard swimming pool in order to start the project 10 years ago.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

Each spring, Bernie and Christy Alsbrook invite friends and family to an open house for train-spotting in their garden railroad.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette

The Lionel toy train company claimed that every boy had or wanted a model train layout in the 1950s. These boys — among guests at an open house for the Eagle Eye garden railroad in North Little Rock — show that some things never change.

Bernie, 59, is a Union Pacific machinist. The railroad's Jenks Shop does a huge job, overhauling the company's fleet of 7,000 locomotives.

GARDEN TRAIN TOURS

The Greater Hot Springs Garden Railway Society will conduct a free tour of three backyard layouts in Hot Springs Village 9:30 a.m.-4 p.m. today.

In case of rain, the event will be May 23.

Club member Ted Elzerman directs visitors to the east gate of Hot Springs Village. Elzerman’s 300-foot-track layout is at 18 Sosegado Lane. Maps and brochures will be available at each stop.

More information is available at hsvmodelrailroads.c…, or by calling Elzerman at (501) 922-9271.

At home, the railroad man keeps three trains going on his 85-by-40-square-foot garden train layout. Some train hobbyists like to run miniature railroading operations the same as real, he says. But he already makes a job of the real thing.

At home, "I just like to watch them," Bernie says, "and listen to them."

The battery-powered little engines chug-chug and toot-toot through the spruce trees, cross the river, climb the trestles, huff through tunnels, and whistle down the line to the town of Eagle Eye.

Christy plays conductor on a walking tour of the diminutive landscape -- pointing out, here, a fox in the woods; and there, a hobo camp, and the teeny couple on the porch of a yellow-trimmed, happy home by the tracks.

"That's me and Bernie on the front porch," she says, "watching for trains."

One day each spring, the Alsbrooks invite hundreds of family, friends and neighbors to an open house. To help haul the freight, they ask for canned food donations for the Arkansas Foodbank (collecting 274 pounds' worth this year). Everybody watches for trains.

On this recent occasion, their niece, Laura McCammon, worked the free hot-dog stand, telling why she does not have trains in her own backyard.

"We have dogs," she says, "so we can't have trains."

Besides, she has watched the Alsbrooks' 10 years of workin' on the railroad, and testifies that it's not easy. In fact, it's earth-moving. This used to be a swimming pool.

Even so, it's highly possible that some of the couple's visitors might leave with plans of going into the backyard railroad business themselves. Bernie and Christy got the idea from a friend's garden train.

They started the way these things do, with the vision of a "G"-gauge train -- the locomotive about the size of a loaf of bread, as Christy describes it -- and a garden.

But then, a train needs cars to haul timber and quartz. And a garden needs mums and myrtles, and mossy banks and azaleas and hostas. And a train needs a scenic route, so

the garden needs mountains and a waterfall, and the train needs fixing, and the garden needs weeding, and the train needs a destination.

All aboard for the scale-model town of Eagle Eye. The name is what some of Bernie's friends call him around the train shop. As a place, it might as well be dubbed Alsbrookville.

EAGLE EYE. NEXT STOP, EAGLE EYE

Christy points out the landmarks of Eagle Eye.

Dr. Nick's Apothecary is named for their son Nick, a nuclear pharmacist. (But Eagle Eye is a quaint place in the age of steam engines, not high-tech medicine.)

Their son Scott "likes to try different beers," Christy explains, and so -- Scott's Chug-'em Down Saloon.

Niece Laura is a schoolteacher not only in real life, but also she presides over Ms. Laura's School in the town of Eagle Eye.

Stephanie's Steakhouse, Charlie's Barbershop, Mrs. Baker's cake shop, Sheriff Seth's office and other establishments all have special meanings within the Alsbrook family.

The Grand Anna River -- a sparkling flow of real water -- is for granddaughter Anna, and look closely.

Christy provides a checklist of sights to find in the layout, including deer and elk, two beavers, all sorts of farm animals and "lots of dogs." Also an alligator.

WATER STOP

The Alsbrooks faced the question of a backyard swimming pool that nobody was using.

Two sons grown. "We were empty nesters all of a sudden," Christy says. They filled in the pool in favor of a new hobby that suited both their interests -- hers in gardening, his in railroading.

"We can work all day," she says, "and he's on one side of the yard and I'm on the other," but they share the same project. "That's pretty cool."

Beyond their backyard, they share this diversion with like-minded enthusiasts across the state and around the world.

The Alsbrooks are founding members of the Central Arkansas Garden Railroad Society, which connects online on Facebook. The Greater Hot Springs Garden Railway Society is at hsvmodelrailroads.com.

The Ozark Garden Railroad Society is at ogrs.org. The Northwest Arkansas Garden Railway Society is at nwagrs.org.

"The idea," as stated by the Northwest group's website, "is simply to have fun running trains, sharing experiences and gaining help."

READY FOR BOARDING

The national Garden Trains Association (gardentrains.org) reports "about 500,000 model train hobbyists in the U.S. and Canada," including indoor trains, garden trains and even trains that run from indoors to outdoors and back.

Garden railroading built steam in Europe before World War II. The war knocked little trains off the track, as factories quit making toys in favor of bigger needs. But today's interest in model trains spans distances no real train ever crossed -- from Arkansas to Australia.

Dedicated hobbyists pay hundreds and up for a battery-run or live steam locomotive, hundreds more for track, and build depots, water towers and freight stations, and plant forests of miniature trees.

"G"-scale starter sets -- a locomotive, two or three cars and enough track to start rolling -- go for $200 or $300, sometimes less online.

The appeal depends on whoo-who's engineering the project. Flower & Garden magazine cites "the joys of having a model railroad at your doorstep that constantly grows and changes with the seasons, the weather, and even the time of day."

Parks & Recreation journal finds "something almost primordial" in the appeal of a model train outdoors. The combination of trains and gardening "crosses generational as well as gender lines."

Model trains were strictly boys' stuff at the high point of toy-train popularity, the 1950s. Lionel electric trains led the market with advertisements that showed beaming boys in engineer's striped caps -- ads that whistled for Dad to "make him the happiest boy in the world."

Bernie reports that girls seem to show the most interest in model railroading these days, at least in watching.

Girls spend the most time on the little bridge on a rise that affords one of the best views of the Alsbrooks' railroad empire.

Sooner or later, the bubble-blowing circus train is bound to come by.

"It's neat to see them enjoying this," he says.

FINAL BOARDING

Bernie presides over the Alsbrooks' garden railroad in a red Razorbacks T-shirt and shorts in place of a railroad man's heavy overalls and steel-toed boots this warm spring day.

He runs things with a remote control the approximate size and look of an old-style mobile phone, the kind with a stubby antenna.

Day done, he will do as train men always have: Head for the roundhouse -- everything safely put away.

Meantime, he leaves it to his friends to see all the little wonders the Alsbrooks have accomplished. He sees what needs doing.

The president, CEO and engineer of the Eagle Eye Railroad envisions a new connecting line -- one that would allow him to operate an additional train. But the land management executive in charge of right-of-ways and environmental impact studies, his wife, will have to green-light the expansion.

Railroads are built on negotiations, the same way he describes the founding of this one:

"She said, 'Do you want to do this? I'd like to do this.' And I said, 'I want to do this,' and I guess I talked her into it."

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