Memory tracks: Meet some of SLO County's model train collectors

On Dec. 25, 1953, John Goni woke up, bounded to his family’s living room and gleefully discovered that Santa Claus had arranged a model train set around the Christmas tree.

The 5-year-old Goni rushed toward the Lionel switch engine freight train, plopped on the floor and began playing with it immediately. And from then on he was hooked.

“Every birthday and Christmas since then, whenever I was asked what I wanted, I said, ‘More trains!’” Goni said.

Beginning in the early 20th century, a train set around the Christmas tree, like stockings on the fireplace, wreaths on the front door and egg nog on the table, became a holiday staple.

The tradition slowed as rail travel took a back seat to cars and planes in the ’50s. But as aging train enthusiasts yearn to harken back to younger days, those trains will continue to run in endless loops during the holidays, as miniature figures stuck in time wave greetings from tiny houses, cars and train depots.

Not only does Goni still have that first train from 1953, he also has around 50 other locomotives and hundreds of box cars he has collected over the years, plus holiday accessories, including a flatbed car loaded with Christmas trees and a North Pole tree lot.

“These do become a fantasy world for everybody,” he said. “Everybody that I know does something on them that relates to their past or their desires. Some guys will emulate their home towns.”

Miniature nostalgia

History certainly does impact the model train hobby.

When Andrew Merriam grew up in Southern California, there were three different rail lines that ran near his home.

“Every 30 minutes there was a train that went by the house,” said Merriam, a model train collector and superintendent of the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum.

According to the book “Railroads Across America,” soon after Lionel began selling electric trains in the late 1890s, consumers began placing them under Christmas trees. And that tradition remained popular for a half a century.

While the hobby isn’t as strong as it once was, as train travel has seen a bit of a revival, so too have model trains, thanks in part to baby boomers with grandchildren.

At Central Coast Trains in Atascadero, owner Anita Walter said most of her customers are retired.

“We get real busy around Christmas time because everybody either wants to add to their Christmas train or they want to start a new tradition around the tree with a train going around it,”said Walter, who owns the only model train store in the county.

Roughly 50 percent of her business occurs during the holidays, she said. Knowing how the industry is tied to Christmas, model train makers play to their crowds. Walter’s store has numerous Christmas-themed train items, including a set Lionel modeled after the train in the Christmas movie “The Polar Express,” box cars inspired by the movie “A Christmas Story,” and “Santa’s Flier,” a red-and-green train the Big Guy would surely appreciate should his reindeer wear down.

For many model train enthusiasts, Walter said, the hobby begins during the holidays. Then, every year after that, they become easy to shop for on Christmas.

“Each year, they get a car,” she said.

Goni has gotten so much train gear through the years, he barely has a place for all of it. Instead, most of his collection is stored in boxes. Someday, the civil engineer said, he hopes to add a room to his home just for his trains.

“I’ve never really counted them,” he said.

A garden railroad

While putting a train around the tree is a simple holiday tradition, Dennis Cementina of San Luis Obispo recently spent a couple of days giving his train set some Yuletide flair.

His outdoor garden model railroad set runs year-round in his backyard, which borders a popular walking path near Islay Hill Park. After working as a carpenter by day, Cementina often sits on a bench during weekends or evenings and watches his battery-run train meander through a quaint village that channels a bygone era.

While the village does not replicate any particular town, several bonsai trees lend it a woodsy, Sierra feel.

Whenever Cementina spends time with his train, he said, he tries not to think about anything too significant.

“It’s just relaxing to sit out here and watch the trains go by,” he said. “It’s like you’re in a whole different world out here, sitting in the middle of it.”

His miniature world includes trestles he made from a redwood fence, a water mill, a church and train station. For Christmas, he decorated his village with tiny Christmas lights, wreaths, ribbons, candy canes and a waving Santa.

Cementina’s world understandably attracts the gaze of passersby, particularly younger ones, who peek through the fence.

“They always ask me, ‘When are you gonna run the trains?’” he said. “There’s no real schedule. Three weeks before Christmas, I’ll have a train running every Saturday.”

Museum in the spirit

To help encourage that nostalgia of trains and Christmas, the San Luis Obispo Railroad Museum has erected two Christmas trains — one under a tree and another upstairs at the future site of a small-scale model of San Luis Obispo County.

Thanks to volunteer work and a $30,000 donation from Phillips 66, roughly a third of the museum will eventually be devoted to the model, replicating parts of the county from the 1950s. While the model will take a year to build, said Merriam, superintendent of the museum, he hopes the Christmas sets will draw visitors, who can also see other train exhibits there.

“Our goal is to make the museum an attractive place for parents and grandparents to bring their kids,” he said. “And one way is to draw on their nostalgia.”

Trains do help adults recall their youth, said John R. Marchetti, the secretary/treasurer at the museum, and long-time model train enthusiast.

“Because we don’t want to grow old,” he said.

He still fondly remembers the first time he put a train under the tree — in 1948.

“I had an American Flyer,” he said. “I had to pay for it myself, delivering papers, because my parents couldn’t afford it.”

This story was originally published December 18, 2014 at 2:31 PM with the headline "Memory tracks: Meet some of SLO County's model train collectors."