The Story of St Jacobs & Aberfoyle Model Railway

by Lynda L Wilson

  "This guy comes through the door and he spots that we have a square grand piano in the house," Wayne said. "It's wintertime and he says, 'Would you mind if I sat down at your piano to give it a try?' And I said, 'Sure!' This is our first face-to-face meeting and we're five minutes into it. He whips off his gloves; he still has his toque and his coat on. He sits down at the piano and he starts to play off a really good rendition of George Frideric Handel's Hallelujah chorus from the Messiah. I said, 'Are you interested in the Messiah?' You see, I used to sing the Messiah with my university men's glee club and the college's choir. The big production where I went to school in Nebraska was the Messiah. It attracted people from about a five-state area. We got soloists from the Metropolitan Opera in New York to come and sing with us. So, I had been a student singing this and he says, 'Do you know the Messiah?' And I said, 'Are you kidding? I’ve sung it many times!' I told him my favourite composers are Bach and Handel, and he says, 'So are mine!' He says, 'Well, let's get down to the trains.' So we did our train thing and within an hour of just meeting this guy, we've got the classical music, we've got the trains, and now guess what? He said when he was young he played baseball for the Guelph team. Guess what position he played? Catcher!" He slapped his knee for emphasis. Wayne played second base up until his early 20s. Apparently there is a very special relationship necessary between the catcher and the second baseman.

  "So, I've changed countries and I've found a new guy with three common interests: the same classical music that I like, the trains, and the fact that he was the catcher on the baseball team. Now that is amazing. That is amazing." He shook his head. "He is bigger in all of those than I am, though. I can't play the piano worth a darn, my singing voice has left me in old age — I'm flat as a pancake now compared to what I used to be — and he was a Lionel collector."

  When Chuck met Frank Dubery at the Mill in Aberfoyle shortly after, it was accompanied by his almost instantaneous defection from Lionel to 'O' gauge. Wayne was happy to pick up the pieces when Chuck asked if he'd like to buy his Lionel collection so he could join Frank in Aberfoyle to begin construction with 'O' gauge. Two months later, Chuck insisted Wayne come down and see what he and Frank were doing. "So, I go down to join them and I said, 'Okay, this is really neat.' For me it was the operation. You could operate these scale trains at very, very slow speeds. Lionel is always too fast and it's kind of jerky. They look beautiful, but you can't get the same operational smoothness out of them and operational smoothness was just like the real thing. That is what hooked me. I think for Chuck it was different. I think it was the detail that hooked him. So, I said, 'Hey, if you're putting on shows, I'll join you and I'll operate.' And that's where I came in and I started operating. We were open to the public every Sunday from May to October."

  Wayne comes by his fascination for trains honestly as well. He grew up on a farm in Nebraska. He received his first electric train set under the Christmas tree when he was 4-1/2 years old. Naturally, he still has it. "This was 1949," he said. "Just across the concession road were small fields bisected by two railways. This was the day of the steam engine. There I am in the front yard playing with my farm set, and I liked the steam engines. What young boy didn't? This man came across the field from the direction of the railway tracks, dressed in overalls covered in oil and soot, coming from a train that was parked over there waiting on a siding for a train coming through in the other direction. He called my dad by name and said, 'Is that you? I've been driving my train past here for a few years and I see you working out there on the farm.' And he said, 'I think I know you.' My dad said, 'Don?' And the man said, ‘Chet?' They had been soldiers together in the First World War!"

  Wayne leaned forward in his chair. "This guy was a locomotive engineer who was dressed the part. This was the summer after I had received my first electric train for Christmas; so, I have my toy train set and here comes this engineer." He smiled. "He shook my hand and then he said, 'I've got something for you.' And he reached through his coveralls down into his inner trouser pocket and he pulled out a silver dollar and he handed it to me."

  When asked if he still had the silver dollar, Wayne said, "You bet I do! I was hooked! That was it!"

  Aberfoyle Junction provided the perfect outlet for Wayne's love of model train operating, and in return he was instrumental in making the next step possible for the group when the top floor of the Aberfoyle Mill became too small for their needs and their lease was up in 1982. He offered the use of a piece of land he owned by the highway outside of Guelph and over a two-year period the group moved a Quonset building onto the land and then deconstructed and rebuilt the layout inside.

  As for his impressive collections, Wayne feels they are an expression of his creative interests. "It's in the finding and the appreciation. It's like art appreciation really," he said, "and partly corporate history appreciation because I'm an economist and corporate history is another hobby of mine. So, it all kind of ties together somehow. It's like a tapestry that I've managed to weave together by dumb luck."

  When asked how he felt about the end of life when all of his beloved collections will just fall away, Wayne told another story. "When I was young," he said, "we had the county fair. In the 50s there was always a guy who would come around in a wagon and he was called the One-Man Band. He would sit in this wagon and his hands and his feet would be tied up to strings that would play all of these instruments." He paused for a moment. "I have a catch-phrase from watching these guys," he said quietly. "When the band leader dies, the music stops.”

  In 1975, Craig Webb visited the Aberfoyle Junction Model Railway for the first time. Craig is a quiet man. He is like his house: small, compact, serious as stone. And yet, there is a hint of a smile behind his eyes, not quite hidden, and you know a young boy lives there still. It is hard not to feel happy around Craig Webb.

  On the mantel of his fireplace in the living room were three passenger cars on tracks that had been carefully laid end to end. The cars were lit from within by a battery pack that was hanging from a wire somewhere down below. These were 'O' gauge, 1:48 scale, and perfect replicas of the CP line, right down to the bolts holding the metal together. This was Craig Webb's specialty and inside each car was another world, silent and still, yet there was a strange sense of movement, the breath of life that only a true artist can bring to his work. And so, like magic, the story, the motion, the energy was there even in the stillness.

  "In the CP Park Series, rear-end cars were the signature car for the train," Craig explained. "Of course, it still is on the Canadian (CP's stainless-steel transcontinental passenger train), but back in the 50’s when CP had the cars built, alcohol was just being allowed on trains again, and so this was what they called the Mural Lounge, which was the only place on the train where you could get an alcoholic drink." He pointed inside one of the cars. "I don’t know whether you can see it or not, but on the forward bulkhead there’s a picture of Banff Park. They had 18 of these cars and they commissioned 18 artists to decorate the Mural Lounge with a mural representing a national or provincial park." These murals were commissioned to Canadian artists, some of whom were members of the Group of Seven. "When I built the car back in the mid 80's," Craig continued, "the murals had been taken out of the cars fairly recently. VIA put them on display in the McMichael Gallery and they also produced a book. So, I photocopied the picture of the Banff Park mural from the book and I put it in there when I was building the car." And sure enough, inside this miniature lounge car is the Banff Park mural.

  He pointed to another car. "This was the dining car. The middle area is kind of dark, but that’s because they used indirect lighting, whereas they had spotlights in the two banquets. I tried to model the train as it would have been at 8:30 p.m. somewhere across Canada. So, in the sleeping cars some of the berths are drawn up and some rooms are still made up for daytime. In the dining car, most of the tables are still being used, but at the end tables, there's no one eating because it's the last sitting. Over here," Cra
ig pointed to a table at the end of the car, "three members of the galley staff are relaxing after a long shift." And indeed there are three young men dressed in kitchen whites seated at a dining table in the back of the almost empty car, one with his arm in the air, mid story. You can almost hear him.

  "Anyway, I got two magazine articles — these were real trade magazines for the railways from 1955 — and they described the colour schemes and everything else inside the cars, and so they are painted as per the original."

  On his dining room table there was a small, neat stack of train schedules from the mid 1950's. They were pristine and looked as though they had never been touched, yet without hesitation, Craig handed one over. For the past 60 years he has opened them and closed them a thousand times, studied them, shown them to anyone who was interested. It's difficult to comprehend how they can be like new. He pulled out a map of the CN and CP routes across Canada and spread it across the table. There were drawings inside some of the pamphlets showing passenger car room options for the 1950's traveller, so no one is wearing pyjama bottoms or hoodies in the pictures; the women have on skirts and sweater sets that must be cashmere, and the men are, of course, in jacket and tie. And smiling. This was a simpler, kinder time.

  The late 1950's was chosen by the group as the timeframe for Aberfoyle Junction. Of course the steam engines were still around, just about to belch out the last plume of black smoke in the humid Ontario air — but surely that wasn't the only reason.

  "Well, apparently the deal seems to be that you model what you grew up with," Craig said. "I have sons of friends of mine who have taken up the hobby too, but they’re in their 30s. They model the 1970s because that’s what they were familiar with." Craig never married. He spent his career as a history teacher for grades 6 through 8 in Hamilton. "I really got interested in passenger service years ago when I was 13 years old and went to Winnipeg by train with my family. I was just fascinated with the whole service," he said, "the dining cars and everything else. Also the way the sleeping cars were built with the beds that folded out of the walls and the ceiling at night, and yet it was a sitting room during the day."

  Walking into the basement of Craig Webb's house was disorienting and a little overwhelming. When you walked around the corner from his small laundry room, his Algoma River Railway layout quite literally took your breath away. Encompassing a 440-square-foot area, the layout was engineered to make the most of the small space, which means the landscape is vertical, mountainous, rising up to 58", so you can watch model steam locomotives chugging up steep inclines.

  "Unlike Aberfoyle, this is a fictitious railway that is a resource railroad running from the CPR mainline up into northern Ontario, above Lake Superior," Craig said. "That’s the theory. So, everything that’s built here is built to railway plans, but I painted the cars for this short line, which I call the Algoma River."

  The Algoma River Railway is based on the lines back in the 1920s. "In the late ‘20s, these little railroads started to pass away because road traffic became more reliable and trucks took over the freight business and people turned to cars or buses," he explained. The layout is dotted with scenes of people in period dress, calmly waiting at the train station or relaxing at Morrison Landing, a replica of a small summer camp, the kind that were accessible by rail in those days. The detail is astonishing, but then Craig, like Frank Dubery before him, is a Master Modeller, number 254 to be exact.

  The largest producer on the line is Craig's Northern Mines, an award-winning piece he scratch-built for his layout. He designed it to be in the process of getting a new roof and new siding, so there are areas where you can see right through the structure. It is jaw-dropping and a perfect example of his artistry. From the hotels in Algoma City to the steamship that waits by the dock in the small town of Alvandale, you are transported to another time and another place. Of course, all of Craig's trains are scratch-built as well, and it is wonderful to watch them suddenly appear in the landscape and then reappear in a diorama he has constructed to handle the necessary loopbacks. It was easy to be fooled more than once by the smoke and mirrors. Craig Webb is a magician.

  The sad end of many basement layouts seems to come upon completion. When the last bit of scenery is added, the last piece of ballast laid by the track, interest tends to wane. Craig carefully designed his railway so it could provide years of enjoyment by concentrating on making it fully operational. He started building Algoma in 1987 (shortly after Aberfoyle had moved to its new location and was finally settling in), and completed the layout in 1992. He has been holding operating sessions with fellow model railway enthusiasts twice monthly ever since. They operate the trains on a fast clock that replicates a busy day in the life of the railway, complete with period train graphs and a card schedule system.

  When he started building Algoma, he would plan when there was a school holiday. "Like Christmas break or the March break, and of course the summer," Craig said. "And so I would have the next piece lined up so everything was ready to go and then I could really go at it for a few days. Then, the little details, of course, they came along later. That was in the evening." He walked to another section of the layout. "See the hobos there under the bridge? Those guys with the campfire?" Two miniature hobos were crouched in front of a blazing fire under a bridge. There was a chicken roasting over the fire. "I had to explain to Model Railroader Magazine how you make a chicken on a spit," he said, laughing. "I soldered a V-shaped piece of wire to the wire that made the spit, and then I used modelling putty to form the body of a chicken around the two V-shaped wires, which were the drumsticks. And there are some feathers there as well. I just tore bits off a Q-tip and put them down there."

  Before he met Frank Dubery and long before Algoma River Railway was ever conceived, Craig was a member of the local Hamilton Model Railway Club. "This would be 1975, I guess, so I was in my mid-30s. I heard that some guy was building an 'O'-gauge railway in Aberfoyle. One Sunday, a friend and I drove up to see if we could find it. My friend stayed with the Hamilton club, but eventually I swung over because I could see what these four people, the Bard’s and the Dubery’s, were doing. The layout looked finished, and most model railways, especially clubs, don’t get to that point. In 1977, I think it was, we had a convention in Guelph at the University and Aberfoyle was obviously on the tour. We had three people from Milwaukee up, Leo Campbell who owned Campbell Scale Models and a guy from Walthers, which is the huge wholesaler in Milwaukee, and Linn Westcott who at that time was editor at Model Railroader Magazine. They were doing presentations at the convention. They came in during a layout tour and they stood looking for a few minutes, and I heard Leo Campbell say to the Walther’s guy, 'This is the first 'O'-gauge layout I have ever seen that doesn’t look like work stopped in 1942!'”

  When asked what would happen to his Algoma River Railway, this remarkable piece of art in his basement when he is gone, he shrugged and said softly, "Well, as was written in Model Railroader several years ago, every model railway is temporary."

  As tragic as that seems, there is something very beautiful in it as well. Like an exquisite ice sculpture, you feel the honour of having experienced it at all.

  A portrait of the original six artists taken in 1985. Back row (left to right): Chuck Bard, Gwen Bard, Wayne Pfeiffer. Front row (left to right): Frank Dubery, Gay Dubery, Craig Webb.

  Chuck Bard inspects a model of a Canadian National Hudson Class, built by Bill Hewitt.

  Gwen Bard positions stalks of corn beside the Farmers' Market.

  Craig Webb re-spiking a piece of rail.

  Executive Director, Mike Craig, in front of the layout.

  HISTORY OF THE LAYOUT

  Back at the layout in St. Jacobs, Gwen carefully positioned stalks of corn behind a house in a quiet suburb. Clothes were hanging on the line; you could almost feel the gentle breeze. The owners of the house must have been out for the day or perhaps they were hiding under their bed as the hand of God came down from the sky to place another stalk
of corn just outside their bedroom window. It was impossible not to be drawn into another reality, into the myriad of stories taking place simultaneously on the layout.

  Across the room, Craig was about three feet up, carefully choosing his steps as he manoeuvred around the tracks and the jagged rocks of the escarpment. He gracefully picked up an 8-storey building that was in his way in the bustling downtown of Wellington. He looked underneath to check its wiring. You half expected to hear the screams of terrified residents as this modern-day King Kong moved with grim purpose through their town. But all was silent, all was peaceful. And Craig, in his white sneakers and khaki pants, carried on down the road until he got to his final destination, a church in the rolling hills just outside of town that seemed to be ever so slightly off of true. He took out his level, placed it to the right of the steeple, nodded and said, to no one in particular, "There you go." Up came the church, jarred out of its quiet reflection in the countryside, upended, studied, and then shimmied back into place on its foundation until it was just right. Perfect, in fact.