Old Trains and Old Men

 December 1, 2022

When I was a kid back in the fifties, my brother and I collected old newspapers from homes in our housing tract. We dragged a Western Flyer wagon up and down the sidewalks, gathering the papers from neighbors, bundled them, and on Saturdays, we loaded them into our father’s station wagon to deliver them to the recycling plant where they got us a penny a pound.

With the proceeds, we bought HO trains, tracks, building kits and accessories. We had lots of stuff, but never got around to actually building a layout. We ended up selling everything at a considerable loss. 

I don’t know wherein lies the fascination with model railroads. In the thirties, forties, and fifties, it may have made sense; railroads were still plentiful, and boys could dream about hopping a train to see the world. But today? It’s an old man’s hobby for which I’ve never had the time nor space. But every year at Christmas time, we drag the old wicker suitcase out of the closet and set up under the tree the Lionel that Linda had as a little girl.

In the back of my mind, the idea never completely left me, and a couple months ago as I was sitting in our back room, a plan began to form. Some years ago, the now closed hardware store in Cherry Creek had a train set suspended from the ceiling and running completely around the room. As I looked at our back room, I could see the possibility, and over a couple days, fastened some 4” boards I had around the perimeter of the room. To make it work, I even took a couple old Erector sets that I still had from my boyhood and made a bridge. 

This being an experiment, I wasn’t prepared to spend a fortune on track, so bought some used from our local hobby and train shop, laid it out, and am ready to connect the transformer and test everything for shorts. Taking the transformer to the shop today, I learned that it was manufactured in 1946, and it still works! I was manufactured in 1949, and parts of me don’t work according to the Manufacturer’s specs!

So why write about old trains? There is nothing “spiritual” or significant about an old Lionel; I could legitimately be accused of wandering around in my second childhood, or wasting time on foolishness. But there is one thing that matters: every piece of this layout is old. The train, the track, the transformer. But it still works; though everything has been in storage for years, it still functions. This, along with the Scriptures, gives me renewed hope. Sometimes in retirement, it feels like I’m out to pasture; I’m not in the loop of anything that’s happening at our church, any authority to make decisions was handed over eight years ago. John Wesley’s Covenant Prayer has a bite to it that wasn’t there when I was working: “Let me be employed for Thee, or laid aside for Thee.” The “laying aside” part was once theoretical. For eight years, it’s been somewhat of a grudging reality for me.

But if a sixty-year old locomotive and a seventy-five year old transformer can be put back in service, so can I. As a Cuban pastor told me a few years ago, “You are a Caleb; go claim and conquer your mountain.” In the hands of the Master, this old engine will pull again, and unlike my train which will only go in circles, who knows what freight will find it’s way to it’s eternal destination?