It's six thirty in the morning in a little town in Austria. A lightening eastern sky promises another beautiful day, as a cool ground mist starts to burn off. A chugging sound in the distance speeds up your heart in anticipation of the steam train as it approaches the grade. Here it comes! The sounds of steam rushing through massive cylinders reach your ears before the massive snout suddenly appears as it rounds the rough cut in the mountain. Faithfully, the two block-long row of cars tag along. You imagine yourself riding the last car, enjoying the cool breeze as the landscape flows past. On the hills above you sheep graze peacefully, seemingly oblivious to the plunging antics of a German shepherd as he tries to keep his charges from straying. Up ahead the clanging at an intersection warns of danger as one hundred tons of diesel freight wait patiently for your train to pass. You wave pleasantly to the conductor who casually acknowledges with a raised hand.

Coming into the station, you notice that the lights are still on in the ticket office, dozens of commuters standing in groups ready to board. On the long down-grade out of town, the train picks up speed, the engine roaring to the task of traveling at one hundred miles per hour. The above imagined scenario and many others like it took place every time I turned the switch on the transformer of my 220 : 1 ratio scale (Z scale) model train replica.

The mentioned sheep stand less than a millimeter tall. A normal six foot wide track ends up less than on quarter of an inch in width! These Marklin trains are made in Germany and have almost all of the features found on their larger cousins. Long locomotives are fully articulated (they bend in the middle), can be coupled or uncoupled remotely, and automatically stop at an intersection when another train is coming. The passenger cars are lighted and show red lights when last in line. Both German and American trains are available. The biggest challenge in creating the toporama came in inventing flora to look realistic in this tiny scale. The solution I came up with was to use parts of naturally occurring plants that branched just like big trees. All I had to do was dry them and dip the feathery ends in green powdered foam rubber to simulate leaves. There are many companies who supply the proper scale accessories, like Volkswagons, people, dozens of buildings and train paraphernalia. No effort was spared in creating realistic detail in these miniatures. Hand detailing and 'weathering' add to the realism. Four miles of railroad track was contained on a board only three by five feet. The silver track is fully ballasted in the proper scale sized granite. An electronically coupled tape recorder supplied the sounds and an actual photographic mountain panoramic surrounded the scene. All buildings were lighted and all crossing were automatically controlled.

The wiring is cleverly color coded for easy installation. The track can be ordered in long flexible lengths and the joints can be kept with the original click together connections or custom soldered for lower resistance. An added AC parallel transformer makes possible five mile per hour speeds. Four locomotives of various types could be run at the same time without colliding. Recently some locomotives were fitted with digital receivers for advanced control. My record for a run without a collision was twenty -two minutes.

I don't recommend these expensive model trains for children with the one exception - they're great for the child in you!

Hobbies come and go, but this one stays.