The George L. Carter Railroad Museum on East Tennessee State University’s campus serves as both a place for passionate lifelong railroad enthusiasts to talk shop, discuss history and work on model train projects as well as light a fire under future generations of train lovers.Saturday was ETSU’s monthly Heritage Day at the museum, where the public was welcomed for free, as is always to case, to see all the museum has to offer in the way of local train history. This installment of the series was themed “The Sound of Railroading, Country Style: Nashville’s Railroad,” orchestrated by the Mountain Empire Model Railroaders, a local 100-plus-person club with members spread across East Tennessee, neighboring states and the country.Member Ted Bleck-Doran was at the controls Saturday, making sure each of the electric train models ran smoothly. With a remote hooked to a cable, he could walk about the many different trains displayed — some owned and operated privately, and some maintained by the university — and regulate the motion of each. Although not each train ran perfectly, it was mostly ship-shape for the lifelong train enthusiast, who explained much of the history since the 1950s to present and how it pertains to East Tennessee from Nashville. He’s been interested in trains since he was a 5-year-old boy in upstate New York, crossing the railroad tracks as he walked to school. He was then much like the little boys and girls playing in the “Little Engineers Room,” across the room from the more mature train room. There, some children were getting introduced to trains and local railroad history for the first time.In the Little Engineers Room, the younger lot plays with train sets and puts together their first tracks each Saturday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. under the watchful eye of ETSU master’s student Amanda Blackburn, a teacher at Dobyns-Bennett High School in Kingsport, who acts as the station master of the museum, helping children develop their love for trains.Blackburn said she’s seen kids come in for the first time and develop a passion so deep they declare at their young ages a lifelong pursuit of work on the railroad, being a conductor, engineer, or anything related to railroads. As a teacher, Blackburn loves seeing the kids develop the spatial and critical thinking skills needed to put together the trains and villages. She’s often amazed at how popular the Little Engineers Room is, and the intricate designs and make-believe lands the kids are able to create.“It’s nice to see the kids going from the little kids room to the big kids room,” Blackburn said about the kids graduating and following their interests to the adult train room. That being said, Bleck-Doran says they welcome people of all ages, backgrounds and interests. They have everyone from young to old, people who’ve worked professionally on movie sets to real railroad men, and truly everything in between, and that’s what he loves about it. What he’s noticed in the region, probably because of the large amount of local railroad history, is a great deal of interest from people in Johnson City and neighboring communities.“We try to achieve a visual reminder of what it would have been like,” Bleck-Doran said of the displays.They have some trains owned by individual members and some owned by the university. Tom McKee, a local attorney, saved one western United States-style train set from destruction by purchasing it and donating it to the university. It sits on display under a plaque bearing McKee’s name, something Bleck-Doran says the museum does for all its many donors.One developing project at the museum is in the Tweetsie room, where the former local line is being built to show all the regional spots where the line’s trains passed, including Elizabethton, Doe River Gorge, Hampton and onward.Bleck-Doran wants visitors of the museum, which total about 100 throughout a good weekend, to have the recognition of the displays to say, “Hey, I know that spot!”What’s behind the displays is tons of effort, with club members working to put out a local living history putting the final touches on several thousand trees behind their displays. Bleck-Doran said members are required to put in one Saturday a year at the museum, to which all willingly oblige, as well as Thursday night work sessions and monthly meetings.He showed where Dr. Fred Alsop would give a step-by-step how-to lesson on how to make ponds for displays. This process shows people both how hands-on train modeling is, and how accessible it is. Given the history of the railroad lines, Bleck-Doran says he loves seeing the kids get excited about the railroads, just like he does.Connor DeVault, of Johnson City, at just 4 years old, is one of the kids. He and his grandfather have a weekly tradition to go out and share a big breakfast each Saturday before heading to the Little Engineers Room so Connor can work on the trains. His love has developed so well and rapidly that he says he had asked for his own set this past Christmas, which he has since put together.
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