(The following report by Bob Withers appeared on the Herald-Dispatch website on November 6.)
HUNTINGTON, W.Va. — A steam engine heads a string of stock cars on a pile trestle. Another locomotive lettered “C.P. Huntington” stands ready to pull two coaches. In between is the “General,” the Civil War-era iron horse of “The Great Locomotive Chase” fame.
Where are we? A railroad yard? A museum? Nope; we’re in George Berry’s dining room on Green Valley Road. And some of the finely detailed wooden trains like the ones that surround him are on sale now at Tamarack — for between $1,800 and $3,500.
Berry, 59, a machinist at Steel of West Virginia Inc., took to woodworking back in 1968, after he and his wife, Carolyn, saw a man making turning bowls in Gatlinburg, Tenn.
“I believe I could make those if I had a lathe,” he told his wife at the time.
When the couple got home, Berry told his father, Debriel, about the experience.
“Let’s build our own lathe,” Berry’s dad told him.
“I was working at McCorkle Machine shop at the time and he was working at Conners Steel,” Berry says. “We would stay after work and work on our separate pieces. We started picking up a few woodworking tools as we went along.”
First, Berry made furniture — such as the mission-style suite and the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed lamp in his family room. He graduated to toys, antique cars and trucks, Harleys, bulldozers, end loaders and backhoes — even clocks that look like a camera and, of all things, a time bomb. But he still wanted to do something different — so five years ago he tried his hand at trains.
“I like trains,” he says. “We’ve made several trips on Amtrak to New York to see our son and I’ve ridden the New River Train several times. My dad got me a drawing of a train somewhere a few months before he passed on that got me started on trains.”
Tamarack, the state’s showcase in Beckley for West Virginia crafters, accepted Berry’s work in September and he took several pieces up in October — including a case in which to display and protect them.
“I’ve sold a few trains to friends, but I haven?t found a market yet,” he says. “That’s why I’m trying Tamarack. I’ve got so many trains now, I either have to sell them or put them in the attic.”
How long do these models take to build for a man who spends 50 to 60 ours at his plant to start with?
“I put in maybe 20 hours a week in the shop,” he says. “The trains are a lot more tedious and time-consuming than the furniture. The ‘General’ took 60 hours; the train on the trestle maybe 100. I get to thinking about how many hours I have in it, and I quit counting.”
And what does his wife think about all that time taken up with “work”?
“I can’t say much,” she says, admiring her living room furniture. “I get a lot of the benefits of it.”
“Hey, I’ve tried to get her involved,” Berry objects. “But she doesn’t want to clean up the shop. So I just leave her at home.”