Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome to Midday magazine for this Thursday, January 9, 2025.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here at part two.
We're going to speak with Matt Lipper UW Madison Extension Wood County Ag Agent.
Right now we have with us on the phone, Gary Oh, Gary is joining us to talk about the
Central Wisconsin modeling rail rotors train show coming up January 11 through the 12th
over at the holiday end.
We're talking about the 27th annual one and we'll be talking about that in a moment.
Gary, thank you so much for joining us.
Thanks, James, for having me on Gary.
I appreciate the time and looking forward to diving into model training with you and
talking about this more.
But first, if you don't mind, I am a history buff.
I love the origin stories of things.
Can we talk about the little bit of the history of the 27th annual model railroad show
and sale?
Boy, and I love history too.
We're right in the same page.
All right, all right.
Sure, the history of the train show, most of us blog multiple railroad clubs.
We all do conventions.
We all do shows.
We're trying to promote the hobby.
And if you look at the Central Wisconsin model rail rotors, which is located in Stevens
Point, this is our 27th year.
People have come in the past.
I mean, we used to be at the old holiday dome downtown.
We moved it around.
It's really nice that the new convention center, but it brings people together.
It's so fun to see families with their kids and the kids are so excited.
They cry when they have to leave because they, you know, they see trains and there's
time, the tank and all the stuff like that.
It's really a wonderful thing.
We've been doing it for a long time.
I've been coming to this, I came to this show well before I even moved to Stevens Point.
So it's a good show.
It looks like a group of people got together back in 1987 and it really got the ball really
got rolling there.
The train really got on the tracks there, if I can.
There's the metaphor.
And I know a lot of those people said to say someone paid way, but you look at the club
here and they restored the bank cross depot.
That's in Heritage Park kind of down by a quick trip right off of the pole would be there.
And they did the caboose.
I mean, we all try to restore the history.
We're all history busting like you.
We like to preserve this for generations to come in.
It's fun.
The 27th annual show and it will be Saturday 9 to 5 and Sunday 10 to 3.
We're going to talk a little bit more about that in a moment, but first Gary, what is
model railroading?
Well, we in the hobby call it the world greatest hobby.
It's so multifaceted.
I mean, there's so much to do it.
And the cool thing is model railroads train hobbyists.
You create a three-dimensional railroad, something actual, it's not a picture, whatever.
It's a 3D thing.
It's got life to it.
It's a mix of non-established history.
So you grew up some time and you really liked that period of time.
You can actually create that in time.
So it's a historical thing.
Other people, I know they like going out west, guess what they have on their layout.
They have Colorado mountains and stuff and they have the roads from out there because as
a kid, that's what they used to do or the grandparents used to work for the sewer line.
It just goes on and on, but the cool thing about model roading, all age groups enjoy it.
You can be from the smallest to the oldest.
It's such a neat hobby.
It's got such a wide range of people involved in it too.
I noticed this when I was doing some research this weekend on our conversation we were going
to have.
It seems like any type of person you can think of, young, old, all different races and
sexes and everything.
It just seems like a big group of people, which is always fun to me, I think.
Whenever you find a hobby that you're interested in, that part of it is great, but then you find
that group of people that are also interested in it and just kind of heightens the hobby.
You can be in a wheelchair enjoy model roading, I mean, how many hobbies can you do that?
Unbelievable.
Yeah.
How did you get started into this?
I actually had like most kids.
I had a line of trains that I had poor sisters, so they had the barbies that I had a little
corner in the basement from my train set, so that's how I grew up and then two boys.
I made the first one wanting to get into model trains.
I was part of a railroad club.
He had so much fun going every weekend and then the other one did two and made a kid save
$100 each and we started model trains and one is really into it.
The other one and I, he moved into some other things, but he still likes coming to the
shows.
So I've been doing this job because I probably even eat or nine years old.
That's really cool to hear and it feels so good as a dad, I mean, I just, you said that
I immediately got my heart filled up just the idea of passing this onto your kids and
then getting into something you got into and some of that, that's pretty cool.
But you, you mentioned something there too, Gary, with showing it to your kids and I immediately
thought of, I always love the add-ons to things and it feels like, well, this is a fun hobby,
it's interesting, it gets a lot of creativity out there and you can be very creative with
it.
It also teaches a lot of patience from what I've read.
It also teaches a lot of things that we try to teach our kids, but whether we're successful
at it or not, we may try to teach them.
This seems like a really cool hobby where they're having fun, but they're also learning
some life skills involved in this.
My oldest son, he come home for school, his dad would have all the parts cut out.
He would come in two or three of his friends would come over and screw all the decking
down.
They'd have so much making stuff, they were so proud of what they're making, they were making
stuff with their hands.
It's not a book, it's not playing a computer, it's not a phone or whatever, you get to make
stuff, they learn wiring, it's such a neat hobby.
There is so much to that, very well put, you know, you can create things on Minecraft and
things like that, I'm sure, but when you're physically doing something with your hands
and then you see the finished product physically in real life, there's something different
about that.
I think a lot of people are nodding their head at that one, whether it's making a model
train or even putting a Lego set together, you can kind of relate to that, I think.
I appreciate you sharing that Gary, not to kind of go to the origin story of where this
all started, where model railroading started.
And like you do in research, I did the same thing and I knew a lot of these answers, but
you look at trains, it basically started in Europe, that's when we've had the first
steam engines way back in 1860, they started making wood trains, toys and engines, stuff
for kids to push around because they wanted to have their own, because they'd be a burn
hell on tracks.
How wild is that?
I would have never guessed that, I think that is so cool.
That's pretty interesting.
And they're expensive to buy, they're antique.
And then in 1875, things got going even further with this.
And that's when tin plate came out and it's basically like a tin can that you get your
vegetables and they make cars out of tin plate tin, they send them and they pee in them
and you start getting things a little more realistic.
And the cool thing back then is they were wind up engines, you had a key and you might
have seen some of those from great great craft parents without you'd wind up and they
go out on the track and make a lot of noise and whatever.
So 1875 was kind of thing, 1897.
Oh, we're losing you a little bit there.
Electric, oh, sorry, it didn't take too long to put an electric motor in a train engine.
Which is wild to think of.
And you think how long that was too, I mean, 1860, 150 years ago, 1897 was key, yeah.
Because that's when they really started to, not just adapt this, but other toys with
incorporating this new electricity that we had and everything.
I had a robot, electric robot when I was at the battery robot with a kid.
You know how much that fun that was to play with?
1901, things really got moving then too.
Yeah, Lionel started, I came around his first name, but Lionel Train started, he's got
initials to it and that really took it off.
He started seeing trains that, that Christmas stores, Disney got involved with it.
Walt Disney had a five acre thing by his house that he had a big train layout going, it
was one of his scale.
A lot of that was how he developed Disney Land on it.
You guys remember Steve Carr Willie?
That's the first train here in MTV.
I mean, all that just got kids and everybody excited about trains.
And then in the 40s, they started incorporating some more stuff with that.
And that big thing is, and I don't know if that's good or bad for our country, for environment,
but plastic injection started.
They started making plastic parts and then we could start getting cars, engines and trucks
that actually looked really good.
And that's really when the hobby started taking off because then you could start painting
and customizing stuff your own.
And you look at today, you can buy anything, you can make anything, this 3D printing, I
don't know if James, if you've done, been exposed to 3D printing.
It's just unbelievable that you can make anything now.
It is incredible.
And it's, to me, one of the cooler things to see is when something new, some new tech
like 3D printing, assists and helps out something that has been around for a while.
And something like this, it just brings it to a whole new audience, a whole new generation.
Jim, James, I don't know how old you are, did you have a train as a kid?
I had a, actually, like a Lincoln log train.
I had a little wooden one.
I had it, it was really fun I remember playing with.
My papa was a semi-driver and he was really in the trains.
And I grew up in Chicago, so you got the L train, you got all kinds of, you know, trains
are a big part of your life when you grow up in that area, at Union Station and all
that.
I've always had a love of trains and riding in them.
It wasn't until I had kids that I started to get them a train set and really got into
the whole idea of it, the hobby of it and everything.
It's a really fun hobby.
Well, you remember the old power packs, you'd hook it up and you just put the knobs back
and forth, so I had a push button around the horn.
Yeah.
Well, kids are running trains now with their telephone, smartphones, call engine driver.
There's a couple you put on your phone, you run the, you log in, put the engine number
into your phone and you run the train with your phone.
I see.
I'm the outside of the layout.
You don't even have to.
I saw that and I blew me away.
I thought that was, I didn't even know about that until this week, I thought that was
awesome.
That is a really cool part.
And another neat thing about this, I would think Gary, is we're just getting started
on seeing how tech and how these things can really impact this hobby.
Yeah, it's, it's, it's growing.
I'm having troubles keeping up with technology.
I'm 69 years old and the kids have no problem with this.
I mean, you need, you got to promise that's a fifth grader these days.
Yeah, right.
And now we're, we're speaking with Gary.
Oh, we're talking about the 27th annual model railroad show in sale that is coming to
Steven's point, January 11th and 12th, the Arctic run 2025.
You mentioned this is a multifacet hobby.
What, can we get a little deeper into that?
What do you mean by that, Gary?
Sure, we're going to go back to your history.
Most people, they're building a train.
Well, you want to learn the history.
You got a specific train or where you want to have it routed.
You know, mine's going to be based basically from a plover up to was off up to
Ryanland or to Green Bay and back to a pack and things.
I'm going to have a whole route.
You're going to recognize buildings.
I mean, I'm going to have a point brewery out and machine foods.
It's, it's, I'm going to have industry.
So I can have my train do stuff.
So people do, it's a history thing.
And then, you know, and that I lead into it, you know, what do you want to have for
industries?
What do you want to have for towns?
Do you want to have for landscape scenes?
Do you want to have hills?
Do you want to have mountains?
Do you want to have lots of trees?
What do you want to name your industries after?
A lot of people, if they name them after their friends or if they got downtown Main Street
Village, they name after family members.
It's so much fun.
Then you get the plan, design it.
A lot of people take photos of what they want to do or go to a library and they'll try
to match the theme of the argument right down to the period car or whatever.
It's so much fun.
The best thing about this hobby is you use just a ton of skillsets, carpentry, electrical,
how to paint, how to make mountains, how to make trees, I mean, it's such a cool thing.
And everybody has skills and we get together and they always come together.
And then once you do all this, you get to operate the trains.
Oh, that's the fun part.
You know, you get to operate trains when the whole layout comes to life.
It's just unbelievable.
People come over and they say, yeah, in our days when we're small, we just ran the
trains around around.
Well, now this type, hey, you're dropping off trains, you've got passengers, you know,
you got to, I got to drop some tank cars at the pay for mail and I got to pick up their
paper stock just like the real railroad.
You actually make just like a real railroad run.
It's real, you're actually, and a lot of our hobbyists are actually former road engineers
and conductors.
They're really fun.
I've been at some operating such people, you have to use hand signals just like they do
in there.
I'm hoping I can cars.
They don't even talk.
They just do just like the real road and recreating history.
That's really cool.
Not only that, recreating of history, but giving opportunity for some understanding of these
positions, these jobs, you know, you get your kid involved in this and we just never
know where a spark may start in a child.
And yes, maybe it starts a love affair with this hobby and may even start a love affair
with just trains in general and working in that industry and we could always use more
good people in that industry.
Well they learn skills that they can use in the real world.
I mean, I got three kids.
My daughter went to UW Madison.
She was the one always helping the boys change light bulbs in their cars now because she
know how to use a 10-millimeter socket of trying new stuff.
I taught my kids how to do all that stuff.
It's a perfect opportunity for dads to teach their kids how to do things and have fun
at the same time.
And I've seen things.
A lot of these shows the grandparents bring the kids and the kids don't want, they have
so much fun with Graham and Graham.
They, and just as a side note too, while I don't know, I've seen a lot of different people
involved in this when you look at pictures and history of this event.
But this event has grown so much, not just with, you know, sons and grandparents and all
that and dads, but women have gotten a lot more involved in this in recent years.
They are the best artistic people for patents, you know, you know, you want to do something
and you just let them paint.
I mean, if you want a mountain scene or you want clouds in the distance, they just have
more fun doing that stuff.
Gary, I can't even draw a stick figure.
So I hear you.
I completely agree with you about that.
Just touching on that part, we're going back just for a second because in doing the research
for this, and I really didn't know much about this hobby.
But I appreciate not only you joining us in sharing this information and more people
can know, but for me personally, I was blown away by how much I would enjoy this
hobby if I gave it a chance.
And I think I'm going to one of the things that I really enjoy.
I'm a planner.
I like planning things out.
I like mapping things out.
And I never really thought much about the idea of, okay, you, you, you, you, you decide
you want to do this, your, your, your, the next step is kind of planning and, and mapping
out what you want to do, how you want your train to look.
The things that Gary was just telling you about that part sounded so cool to me.
All these other things are fantastic and awesome and getting to operate the train and everything.
But the idea of mapping this out the way you like to, the, what you want, that seemed
really cool.
That seemed like a really fun part of this.
Well, I'm going to have a lot of such insurance up in the wash.
I always thought that billing was so cool that people up there.
I mean, you, you find steps and, oh, it's a, I'm from Green Bay.
I'm going to have some Green Bay landmarks on there.
Hmm.
It's pretty cool.
When people come to visit, it goes, she's, that's the old red, old warehouse.
I remember that.
That's awesome.
Gary, what is the best way to get into this hobby?
Well, you're great lead in question.
You want to come to a model train show.
You need to come to a model train show.
You get to see stuff.
I mean, there's all different sizes of trains from little ones to the biggest ones.
Garden scale.
I mean, it's unbelievable what you get to see and it'll plant a seed.
And you'll probably walk away by a few things or at least come back with a lot of ideas.
But I think that's the number one thing.
I think, and then my next one, which is really important, don't try to do it on your own.
Join a model railroad club.
That was the best thing.
My kids would just love to go and they had to do their homework first because they'd get their homework done right
because we're going to the train club show.
And they'd have so much fun that we'd work kind of layout to the club layout stuff.
But I think the next thing is a model railroad club because what's going to happen is you're going to have people come
join you that have skills that you don't have.
You're going to learn just as much.
You're going to learn so much more and you're going to do it so much better the first time you're on.
There are a lot of great organizations in our locally in our area too that you could check out to find out more about this.
Yeah.
Central Wisconsin model railroad club since Stevens Point that the club that's hosting this one.
They've been around all 40 years at least.
And they meet every Wednesday of the first Wednesday of the month at Heritage Park and Explorer.
If you remember where I mentioned earlier about the Vancroft Depot, they actually model the meet and the basement.
And they get together and you just need to be 18 years old to become a member.
OK, if not, your dad has to bring you so under age.
There's no do's and it's just to have fun.
And there's other clubs will pack up.
We'll be at the show.
I'll be running with them the weekend Wisconsin Michigan, which is out of Marinette, Miami where I used to live.
I'll be with them running some of the day.
I know so many people, different club members all over the country.
It's unbelievable how you get to meet people.
I know there's a really nice club.
If you ever get a chance to go up to Yankee Museum up in a wasa, Wisconsin Valley model railroad club.
It's actually what they call the paper over switch to go from Wisconsin rapids up to wasa.
They're modeling that is the coolest thing.
If you like history, you want to go see that layout.
And if you go with them and they're running it, that's even better.
They both run a train.
There are so many great opportunities for people to find more.
And Gary, as we're closing with, could you give us the details on the model train show this weekend?
Sure, James.
Again, I just said it's the 27th annual Arctic one model range show, a road show and sale.
They actually sell stuff there.
It'll be at the Holiday Inn Convention Center.
I'll give you the address.
People put it in their GPS.
1-001 Amber Avenue and Steven's Point.
But it's basically off of Highway 10.
It's just a little bit east of Fleet Farm.
And where the new Hobby Lobby is just kind of north across the street from right next to the Holiday Inn.
You can't miss it.
It's really easy to find.
Admission is $5 for adults, $2 for kids or for children, age 12 to 17, but under it's free.
And the reason they charge is they have to pay for the facility.
But any money that's after expenses of that expense, everything goes to nonprofit, goes to the local charities.
Because all the railroad clubs are nonprofit.
We need, we're members, we don't get paid or anything.
We just do a Mr. Promoto Hobby and they have fun.
So it's kind of a cool thing and I'm hoping a lot of your listeners and even you come to the show.
I would love to.
I really would.
It's going to be a really fun event.
And we want to remind everybody that not only is this fun for people that want to, that are into the hobby,
but people that want to find out about the hobby, head on over there, ask your questions.
These, the gang over there is looking forward to answering those.
And it's something that we've touched on a little bit as throughout the conversation.
We know that there's plenty of people out there in these winter months that are isolated a little bit more than others
or maybe don't get out as much as they'd like to.
This is a great opportunity to get out, meet some new people, hang out and meet some people that have a great hobby and a great interest.
And I think just even that, just showing up and asking your questions, I think will lead to a great time.
And they have the, how the end of the super job they'll have food for us.
It's a reasonable compared to other cities.
I'm hoping we have the banjo player there are playing railroad songs again.
He's just a curatory doesn't thing, but they use both sides of the convention centers at that middle section.
They take the whole left side, which is like usually three or four rooms plus they take the right that we fill the whole thing.
It's unbelievable. How much you'll see.
Gary, I feel like we buried a bit of the lead.
I love banjo. I love banjo players. That's awesome.
That's fantastic. What a great addition to that.
Do about also, and I think you mentioned this earlier, the central Wisconsin model roaders have a great Facebook page.
Go ahead and check that out.
You can find out more information there and find out more about model train hopping there as well.
Gary, this has been a great conversation.
Thank you so much for hanging out with us.
I'm hoping you come this weekend and look for me because I'll let you.
I got a remote control.
You can run the train on the outside and blow the horn as it goes through intersections.
You'll stop and be passed.
You might have to back trains up just like the real thing.
Man, that is awesome. Thank you.
Thank you for offering that.
Just talking about it, this may be a kid again.
Just thinking about it does, man. It sounds great.
I wish you guys a fun, successful week and enjoy it.
Gary, did too good of a job.
You're going to have to come back sometime, okay?
Okay. Thank you.
Thank you for the time being here.
Thank you.
We'll be back with more Midday Magazine right here at 97.5 FM.
13.20 AM WFHR. We are locally grown radio.