Members of the Model Railroad Club of Toronto may call it operations, but David MacLean admits it really is playing with model trains. But, the track in Liberty Village is not your average toy train, it's a miniature world."It's like a giant game," club member MacLean said. "Each car can be shipped to tasks and destinations."
Every inch of the 5,000 feet of track was built by hand. It has been under construction at its current location for 62 years.
The club was founded in 1938 by Borden Lilley and Harry Ebert. Originally located in Ebert's basement, the Model Railroad Club of Toronto moved to Toronto's Union Station.
When the Second World War ended the club moved to Liberty Village, into what once was a machine gun firing range, according to MacLean, and some pre-1946 pieces were moved and remain intact.
"The concept is set and has been since the 1950s," he said. "It's a fictitious railway called the Central Ontario Railway."
Every last inch of the model has meticulous detail. The ads on the sides of the buildings promote 5 cent cigarettes. The railway stations in the towns, from Lilleyburg to Ebertville, are spacious so lots of people can come and go as would have been the norm 60 years ago.
There are 700 freight cars, 100 passenger cars and 70 locomotives in the layout. Surrounding the tracks are highly detailed scenes of mountain climbers, waterways, and even a car-crash over an embankment.
It is all fully functional right down to the signals and lights. One person can run one train and it takes about 20 minutes for the trains to travel the scaled-down equivalent of 10 miles.
MacLean got involved through his father who first took him to an open house in 1970, when he was eight-years-old. He has been a member since 1990.
John Barton, known as the 'Trainman', at 80 is the club's oldest member.
"I've always like things that are scaled,' Barton said.
To say he simply likes the perfectly scaled models may be a bit of an understatement for a man who over the years has spent somewhere in the vicinity of 12,500 hours working on the track.
The Model Railroad Club of Toronto held its annual public open house on Feb. 10 and 17. A third open house is scheduled for Feb. 24 from noon to 4:30 p.m. Admission is $8 for adults, $5 for seniors and $4 for children. In addition, the club runs an operating session on the first Wednesday of every month which, MacLean said, the public is welcome to attend.
The club is located at 171 East Liberty Street, Unit 220 near the corner of Hanna Avenue.