Ex-Railroad Worker Opens Model Train Shop In Md.

By KATY CIAMARICONE

By Cecil Whig

NORTH EAST, Md. (AP) -- The mere sight of a model-train display can overwhelm people.

Just ask George Boatwright, who has co-owned Mile Post 114 model train supply shop in North East with his wife, Lois, since last April.

Boatwright said at his store, it's not unusual to see a grown man cry.

Members of the public who drop in the store, on Main Street, often stand in awe upon hearing the horns blow and watching the freight and passenger trains chug through a village of several hundred pieces that include churches, schools, shops, snow-covered trees and characters from the classic film "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer."

"When you're in this particular business, people smile when they walk in the door," Boatwright said. "North East is a tourist town, and all year long, people just walk down the street and they just open doors; they don't look at signs. If I've had 5,000 people walk in this store, 3,000 of them don't know it's a model train store until they walk in. I've had people actually start crying because it brings back memories of childhood; they are reminded of an uncle or grandfather or someone that likes trains."

Unlike many adults with a deep-seated nostalgia for locomotives, Boatwright, a Florida native who lived in Cecil County just one month before setting up shop here, did not grow up with model displays in his home.

"In Florida, people didn't have the room for it - there were no basements and no attics unless you lived in a big house," he said.

But there were railroads in the area, and in 1977, he answered a help-wanted ad that Seaboard Coastline Railroad had placed in the local newspaper.

"They were looking for clerks; you had to be able to type 44 words," Boatwright said. "I took typing in high school and had made a D. To make a D, you had to be able to type 40 words, so I figured I could get by."

A few days after he applied, the railroad offered him the job - of trainman.

"That's the conductor - you switch the cars and ride on the caboose," Boatwright explained.

He worked as a trainman for 14 months, and then trained to become a locomotive engineer. He started working for Amtrak in 1984, manning the auto-train service that ran from Florida to Virginia. He worked on the railroad 32 years in all.

His wife, Lois, is a Pennsylvania native who spent childhood summers in Charlestown Manor. She was also working for Amtrak in Florida in 2006 when a mutual friend introduced her to Boatwright, whose wife had died of cancer a year before.

When Lois started to miss the changing seasons, the couple decided to move to back north. Boatwright had a lot of train
merchandise he had collected over the years and, serendipitously, a week before they moved here, the 114 S. Main St. location, a former antiques store, became available for lease.

The Boatwrights had been tinkering with the idea of opening a store, and the sudden availability seemed like a sure sign to do it. They signed a lease and opened up shop on April 30, 2010 - just 30 days after moving to town.

Since then, Boatwright said, "All the merchandise I brought with me (from Florida) has been sold in the past 18 months. We deal in new merchandise now; I don't buy and sell old trains."

He is now the secretary of North East Rotary and a North East Chamber of Commerce board member.

He said the store does 50 percent of the year's business in October, November and December.

They sell Chuggington and Thomas the Tank Engine merchandise in the back corner of the store, but "other than that, the whole store is adult model trains," he said. "Our business philosophy is to have people smile when they leave the store."

Karl Reichenbach of Zion Acres also knows all too well the look that comes across the face of many adults when lay their eyes on a model train display.

Reichenback has been opening his personal display to the public every holiday season for 25 years. But he said it would never be fully finished.

"There's new stuff every year. I'm still working on the layout; it's got 2,000 feet of track but now I'm just working on the
details that make it look real. Just finishing the scenery on it," he said.

He started the setup in his basement in 1986, but 10 years later, he said, "I wanted my basement back" so he moved the display to the second floor of his garage, where it's been ever since.

He said he's had hundreds of people stop by so far this season.

"I had a lot of people come by yesterday," he said on Monday."A lot of them said, `I used to bring my kids here, and now I'm bringing my grandchildren."'

Reichenbach got his first train in 1949 when he was 3 years old - a Lionel model he still keeps on a top shelf with his display.

"It's just a train; nothing special," he said.

He grew up near the CSX tracks on Cleveland Avenue in Newark.

"They were right in my backyard," he said, but added that his real fascination came from the layouts his mom and stepfather used to set up in the house every year at Christmas.

In 1984, when he opened Zion Market and Deli, Reichenbach set up a little train display in the back of the store.

"It just fascinated me that little kids would be so in awe of it," he said.

He built the layout in his basement two years later, and opened it to the public that year for Christmas. Now, he said, people come from near and far to see it.

"People take bus trips up here from conventions, daycares; I've had church groups come through," he said.

He would like to have time to chit-chat with all the visitors, but "it's difficult when you have four or five trains to run," he
said. "You have to have somebody driving the trains, just watching them to make sure they don't run into each other."

He said he would open his display to the public during the holidays "for as long as I live, probably. It's not something you take down. You're always adding details, you know. That's part of the enjoyment of the hobby, sharing it with others."

Information from: Cecil Whig of Elkton, Md., http://www.cecilwhig.com

(Copyright 2011 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)