Columnist Susan Snyder: LV train club still gaining steam

Tuesday, May 9, 2000 | 9:34 a.m.

Susan Snyder's column appears Tuesdays and Saturdays. Reach her at snyder@lasvegassun.com or 259-4082.

The Narrow Minded People of Las Vegas have a bunch of ideas, but you couldn't tell by just looking.

The club's display was among the most bare at this past weekend's Great American Train Show at Cashman Convention Center. But give them some time.

The half-dozen, narrow-gauge model train enthusiasts have a ton of ideas. They've been a club only about six months, member Vic Colburn said. Their display is a string dioramas connected by the trains that travel through them. A partially finished mine stood four feet tall on Colburn's section.

After Colburn finishes the mine he'll begin work on a logging camp. The train will haul logs to his buddy's sawmill at the other end. The sawmill -- the only scene that stood finished Sunday -- looks real, right down to the teeny men seated around a smoking campfire.

"By next year, this will be scened out," Colburn said, pointing the empty boards crisscrossed by train track that surrounded him. "We are working to create a time -- an authentic scene of a real place. It will be to museum standards. It is not a toy train."

Nope, not with trains pulled by engines that can cost $1,700 or more.

Colburn is the first to admit the whole train thing can be more sickness than hobby. One club member is divorced. Colburn thinks it was over trains.

"My wife has learned to live with it," he said quickly.

"The bad thing is my wife isn't into it," fellow member George Cibrowski added.

Cibrowski's wife makes him keep his trains on one side of the garage. She insists he leave room for her car.

Colburn shook his head.

"My garage is for the trains. The cars go outside."

Yes, even when it's 112 degrees.

Colburn has been a model train buff for 35 years. His Las Vegas train shop went belly-up in February after being open for only 18 months. Statistics show Las Vegas is a hot spot for new businesses, but evidently not new train stores. Colburn drives a truck now. Trains, he said, draw narrow clientele.

"Look around," he said, referring to the paunchy, graying crowd milling around the exhibit hall. "... Most are in their 50s and 60s."

And all have their idiosyncracies. Some guys like to run as many trains on a track as will fit. Others like to see how many cars they can attach to one train.

Colburn is a scenery man. He delights in figuring out the exact way to paint a mountain or fashion a tree.

The narrow-gauge trains Colburn's club fancies are modeled after those once used in twisting, mountainous terrains. To build a proper diorama, a modeler has to know the terrain and what grew there, depending on the season, year or even time of day.

"Conifers or deciduous trees. The type of rock. You're looking at everything," Colburn said. "You have to be an artist. You want to make it look realistic."

Colburn figures by the time the Narrow Minded People's Club members set up their display at next year's Cashman Center train show, a lot of what they envision now will be finished.

But a lot won't be. This is one of those hobbies where ideas take off like runaway ... well, you know.

"We're not collectors," Colburn said. "It's a lifetime hobby."