WORTHINGTON - Tractors were lined up along the paths at Pioneer Village for the Prairie Reapers Power Reunion on Saturday.
Volunteers demonstrated traditional ways of doing things, such as baking cookies on a wood-fired stove and bending iron on a blacksmith’s forge.
And over in the Village Hall, John Galstad shared the love and lore of railroads, displaying a small portion of the train-related items he has created and collected over the last 45 years.
“I have loved trains,” said Galstad, pausing to think about how far back the interest goes, “well, I can never remember not liking trains.”
As a child, Galstad recalled cutting pictures of train cars out of the Sears & Roebuck catalog and stringing them together to make a paper railroad. But he began actively collecting train models - all HO, 1/87th of actual size - when he moved to Worthington in 1971. He eventually became a member of the Otter Valley Railroad group in Sibley, Iowa, which has a large display at the fairgrounds there.
Almost everything Galstad had on display Saturday was self-made, including the shelves he uses to display the models. The exceptions are six Lionel train cars in boxes - the Sputnik collection that came about because of the space race in 1957 - and a purchased model of a Schnabel car, which was used to carry large pieces of equipment, spreading the weight out across the equivalent of eight standard cars.
During the years he worked as a traveling salesman of agricultural chemicals, the train hobby was a stress-reliever for Galstad.
“It was awesome, because I could spend 15 to 20 minutes on something and then put it down,” he said. “I like to hunt, but you need several hours if you’re going to do something like that.”
Part of Galstad’s display included a step-by-step explanation of what goes into making each model car. He admits that it takes patience and an eye for detail - although not too much detail.
“It’s a thought process - figuring out how you’re going to do things,” he said. “If the eye sees certain details, the mind will fill in a lot of the rest. A lot of the details I’ve chosen to leave off because you can go to a lot of work and never see it.”
An offshoot of Galstad’s hobby is taking photographs of trains. He has traveled far and wide to get photographs pertaining to railroads, even getting himself buried in an avalanche of snow to get a shot of a train going through some deep drifts. He also has images of a circus train that visited Sioux Falls, S.D., in 1994, including the elephants being loaded onto the specially designed rail cars.
“They did the animal parade, and then the cars were parked across from the airport and they loaded them up,” he described.
For visitors who stopped by the Village Hall - which once was the town hall in Reading and is decorated with painted backdrops of an earlier era - Galstad was enthusiastic about explaining his hobby and had some stories to tell, too, if they had the time to listen.
“Did you ever hear the story about the Transcontinental Railroad and Abraham Lincoln?” he queried, launching into a tale about how Sioux City, Iowa, was supposed to be a major transportation hub, rivaling Chicago in size, but the plan was thwarted due to some geographic misinformation.
Galstad especially enjoys sharing his love of trains with his own grandchildren.
“The grandkids don’t even get their coats off when they come to visit,” he said. “They head straight to the basement to see the trains. Even the 2-year-old, when they say they’re going to go visit Grandpa John, he says, ‘Toot, toot!’” related Galstad, pulling an imaginary train whistle.
