All aboard in Sibley

• Boys with Trains

Ryan Mcgaughey/Daily Globe Thomas Pickar, 5, and brother Anthony Pickar, 2, both of Graettinger, Iowa, look at an exhibit Saturday during the model train show in Sibley, Iowa.

Talk about it

SIBLEY, Iowa — For 25 years, the Otter Valley Model Railroad has made its tracks in the basement of the open class building of the Osceola County Fairgrounds.

That anniversary was marked Saturday with a model train show, sponsored by the Prairie Lakes Division of the National Model Railroad Association (NMRA), inside Sibley’s American Legion building. For fans of model trains — along with all types of related parts and accessories — it was an ideal place to be, and for more casual attendees, door prizes and refreshments kept a large number of folks around.

Model train shows have been an ideal place to be for Denny Davids of Sibley for many years. In fact, Davids was one of four men who founded the Otter Valley Model Railroad in 1985.

“I’ve been into collecting model trains since the early ’70s,” said Davids, not officially the president of the Northwest Iowa Model Railroad Club but its de-facto leader nevertheless. “People of my era … everybody had a Lionel train set given to them at Christmastime. You get older, and you think about those days when you used to play with trains. It’s kind of a nostalgia thing.”

Davids and the 10 to 12 members of the railroad club do more than simply play with trains. Club members, who hail from either southwest Minnesota or northwest Iowa, collect and build model trains and show them in various locales.

“I’ve kind of gone from playing with trains into modeling,” Davids said. “You re-create what the actual locomotives and cars look like. … There’s a lot of detailing.”

On Saturday, model train fans from around the region converged on Sibley. Davids described the Prairie Lakes Division of the NMTA “as one of the largest divisions, as far as geography is concerned, in the nation.” People from cities such as Fairmont, Emmetsburg and Council Bluffs, Iowa, and Grand Island, Neb., were in attendance, and they enjoyed the opportunity to vote on their favorites in any number of model train-related categories.

In addition to a club business meeting, the Otter Valley Model Railroad exhibit was opened Saturday afternoon at the fairgrounds. It was a busy day for Davids — thought it didn’t involve any vending or buying. (“According to my wife, I’ve got too much stuff,” he said with a laugh.)

Instead, Davids spent his time presiding over the show, and also showed off some of his creations.

“I did all the custom paining on those, and I did the decals,” explained Davids, pointing to a nine-car model train in front of him that included a caboose, two locomotives and grain cars. “You buy a plastic kit, put the necessary detailing on. … I work under a magnifying glass and tweezers.

“An engine like that,” gestured Davids, “I probably spent about 40 hours on that one.”

The Otter Valley Railroad display encompasses about 10,000 feet of track inside its fairgrounds location. Club members meet Wednesday nights throughout the year at the site.

Tags: news, trains, toys, sibley, iowa