In my previous posts I recounted that I was a railfan from my earliest memory…or at least a boy who loved trains. I also shared that I did not discover the world of model railroading until I was in my late 20s. Well, that isn’t ENTIRELY true. Let me tell you what I mean.
The children’s TV series Mr. Rogers Neighborhood firt aried on PBS the same year I was born. Some of myearliest memories of home included watching PBS in the afternoons–Sesame Street, The Electric Coompany, Zoom, and Mr. Rogers. Every child of my generation remembers Fred Rogers entering his studio house each day, singing, “It’s a beautiful day in the neighborhood…” as he changed from jacket to sweater and dress shoes to loafers. You knew every day that Mr. Rogers was going to encourage you, make you feel good about yourself, and teach you something along the way.
Some of my favorite parts of the show were the opening and closing credits, however. Do you remember the camera panning up and down the streets of a modeled neighborhood all the way to Mr. Rogers’ house? It was a modeled neighborhood. Again, I had no experience with scale models, dioramas, or model railroad layouts, but I knew that neighborhood was super cool!
Even better that the opening and closing strolls through the modeled neighborhood, however, was the adventures we would have every day in the Land of Make Believe. Those puppet characters were my friends, and the homes and buildings of that magical place were fascinating to say the least. But the BEST part of the Land of Make Believe was Mr. Trolley. He would come wheeling out of his staging space beyond the wall to have a trolley bell conversation with Mr. Rogers each day before zooming on into and through the magical Land of Make Believe. I know now that Mr. Trolley was a DC model that ran fore and aft with a switch that Fred himself would through with an out of sight hand, but to my small childhood self he was alive.
Once in the Land of Make Believe, Mr. Trolley would zoom through the neighborhood on an elevated track to interact with the characters of that place. I didn’t know it at the time, but Mr. Trolley was my first experiece with a model railroad. He would inspire me to one day build my own Land of Make Believe–a model railroad layout. The trains that run on my magical little world are just as fascinating to me today as Mr. Trolley was to my 4, 5, and 6 year old self. As Mr. Rogers tried to tell us, it is really all about what your imagination can wonder.
