(The following article by Tarah Holland was posted on the Roanoke Times website on December 14.)
ROANOKE, Va. — For the first time in 33 years, there’s a train headed for a stop at the old Norfolk and Western passenger station in downtown Roanoke.
But unlike the last locomotive to leave the station, the inches-long cars on this train won’t be carrying any passengers.
After being in storage for 55 years, a historic N&W model railroad display is being set up in what is now the O. Winston Link Museum at Shenandoah Avenue and Williamson Road.
Train enthusiast Jim Molinary and other members of the Roanoke Valley O Gauge Club were asked by the Link museum to resurrect the display this month at the museum where the train display was revealed for the passenger station’s Grand Reopening after Raymond Loewy’s 1949 redesign and renovation.
Now more than a hobby, Molinary’s love of steam engines and railways spawned the Roanoker to make them his business. The owner of Rail Yard Hobby Shop on Williamson Road, he’s the primary restorer for the project, according to museum spokeswoman Natasha Taylor.
“He runs the place in Roanoke for model trains,” she said. “And the project is a great way to get the community to tie in with the museum’s activities.”
For weeks, Molinary and the group – also the force that built the model train layout at the Virginia Museum of Transportation on Norfolk Avenue in downtown Roanoke – have worked with some current Norfolk Southern employees and retirees to find pieces of the display, which they’ve also cleaned and brought to the Link museum.
“We think that it may have been a semi-traveling display,” he said. “But anyone involved with it is apparently gone.”
The train display is spread over its four original tables in the lobby of the visitors center, just outside of the museum, and can be seen through the building’s front windows.
Guided by a black-and-white photo of the display’s debut, the group hopes to have the train running by Christmas, Molinary said.
A custom-built replica of the passenger train station will be the centerpiece of the display. It was among the model’s original pieces found in boxes at various Norfolk Southern properties in Roanoke, Molinary said.
Also found were a mountain tunnel, ends of evergreens used as trees, and the O scale tracks, laid by hand, one piece at a time, he said. For some of the structures that weren’t found, duplicates will be used, including the streamlined J-class locomotive and the passenger and freight cars of the train. Scale models of farms, people and animals also will be added.
“We’re trying to duplicate the original as best we can,” he said.
To the group’s surprise, leftovers of a sawdustlike material used as grass in the original project were found in storage and will be used for the restoration, Molinary said.
A coal mine section of the original display was not found, however, and won’t be added.
“It’s been such a big part of the community for a long time,” Taylor said. “And it’s bringing out the special tie between Link’s work and remembering what was here in this building.”
Internationally known, Link chronicled the N&W in the 1950s through photography. With many of his most memorable photos taken at night, he captured the last days of the American steam locomotive. To many, he also froze an innocent time of the world in his camera lens with images of such scenes as folks sitting around a wood stove sharing a story, or a young boy waving to the engineers as a train, billowing steam, chugged by.
Once completed, the display will be moved to the Norfolk Southern galleries and heritage displays at its Norfolk headquarters.
“A lot of people associate model trains with the holidays,” Taylor said. “Now it can also be associated with history and the museum.”