Model train show draws fans of all ages to downtown Tacoma, and you can still go
Just about the only thing separating the adults from the kids Friday at the 28th Model Train Festival was height. Young or old, they all stared in rapture as trains disappeared into tunnels, went over bridges and passed through painstakingly detailed landscapes spread around the Washington State History Museum in Tacoma.
Just inside the museum’s main entrance, a crowd gathered around a Lionel train display where the level of realism was sending jaws agape. In one corner of the set-up, a group of tiny men were digging next to a track. As if by magic, the little workers were moving back and forth with their Lilliputian picks and shovels while another, a welder, was sending a blue light across the scene.
Nearby, a Saturn 5 rocket — the booster that sent Apollo astronauts to the moon in the late 1960s and early 1970s — was sitting on its launch pad. It seemed ready for takeoff as steam came from its base.
And yes, there were trains. Many, many trains.
This reporter was briefed on the Lionel display by young enthusiast Jem Phillips, who was visiting the show from King County with his mother Anne. The 9-year-old has a model of a Saturn 5 at home, along with several different types of train sets.
“I have TrackMaster trains, wooden trains, electric trains,” he said before going into details on each. He’s seen a real Saturn 5 at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, he said, and his father works on New Glenn rockets for Blue Origin.
He declared the show, “awesome.”
Family tradition
The festival was the first for Jem but it’s become a family tradition for many, according to Michael King, the museum’s education and public programs manager.
“We found that many adults that come back came as children, almost 30 years ago,” he said. “This is kind of part of their holiday tradition.”
Parking in the area was hard to find Friday. Attendance at the museum during the show goes to around 7,000 people per week, King said. Normal daily winter attendance is around 100 people.
While some train scales the eight clubs at the show use are so small one needs to lean in to see details, the trains on display in the museum’s lower level are big enough to ride. And that’s what members of the Kitsap Live Steamers club do in Port Orchard. The group offers free rides at their club track on the second and fourth Saturdays of every month, April through October.
While you won’t be able to ride these trains you can get up close to them. Some weigh close to 1,000 pounds and the club’s newest cost them $25,000, according to member Kan Kaivo.
The engines are about 1:8 scale and run on steam, battery or fuel. The club has 10 acres and 6,000 feet of track to use at South Kitsap Regional Park.
Kaivo calls his love of model trains an addiction and, like young Jem, can quickly name all the various types and scales he owns. It was in 2000, however, when he fell hard for these large scale versions after seeing them on a trip to Colorado.
“I looked at my wife and I said, ‘I’m gainfully employed. Can I buy something and get into this?’ And she said, yeah,” he recounted. He now owns a 400-pound switcher engine. Its real-life version weighs 65 tons.
Pierce County in miniature
The history museum has its own massive and permanent model train display maintained by volunteers who have created historically accurate depictions of local sites, including Tacoma’s Union Station.
For the show, a local HO Modular Group set up its Seattle Pacific and Eastern Railroad display which included Tacoma Rail engines and a Sound Transit Sounder train. A few inches away, cargo ships were being loaded with shipping containers at the Port of Tacoma.
Member James Monroe of Lake Stevens was helping to run the trains Friday. The HO scale is about 1:87 and the club’s entire display measured 40-by-28 feet, he said. Each section is owned by a different club member. At shows like this one, the modules can be assembled in a variety of configurations.
At a display by the Mount Rainier N Scale club, member Ed Hansen of Puyallup was keeping an eye on train traffic. Like most (maybe all) of the enthusiasts at the show, Hansen, 64, got hooked on model trains as a kid. But then high school sports, raising a family and working put his childhood pursuits on the back burner until his 30s.
“I thought I’d go to work for the railroad, but, you got a wife, a kid ... it’s not really what you should do,” he said. “This here, you can turn it off every night.”
If you go
What: 28th Model Train Festival
Where: Washington State History Museum, 1911 Pacific Ave., Tacoma.
When: Through Jan. 1, 2025.
Hours: 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Sunday.
Admission: Adult $14; Senior (age 65+) $11; Student (age 6-18 or older with current high school ID) $11; Child (age 5 and under) free; Military (active duty or retired with ID) $11.
Information: washingtonhistory.org/
This story was originally published December 28, 2024 at 6:00 AM.
