Maybe Dave Pool knows it or maybe not, but he is on to perhaps the best way to bridge the generation gap to the modern, videogame-addled kids of today.
Throw some model trains in a basement ”“ but bring your glue gun.
At the Wilton Historical Society, for the 11th holiday season trains chug through the recesses of time, winding their way past villages and landscapes evoking bygone times ”“ with a nod or two to modern technology. Above the society”™s lone permanent exhibit, a zeppelin floats; one room over, a mini-camera mounted to a chugging locomotive beams video to an overhead monitor, with delighted children leaning over the track to get on TV.
There is barely room for all the items Pool, his fellow eight volunteer “trainmen” and the society can showcase. Several die-cast cars from Norwalk-based MBI Inc.”™s Danbury Mint collection are parked on tables; in a nod to today, a model Hogwarts Express train from the Harry Potter series sits next to a Depression-era Lionel set.
Running through mid-January, the Wilton exhibit is not the only stop for the hobby in Fairfield County. The Stamford Model Railway Club dates to 1939 and has more than 6,000 feet of track today featuring scenes from the city”™s railyards. The Housatonic Model Railroad Club is building a massive layout in Fairfield evoking the line from Danbury to Norwalk a half-century ago.
For Wilton resident Pool, the hobby turned serious in his boyhood growing up in northern New Jersey, after his older brother shipped out for duty during World War II, leaving behind a pile of hobbyist magazines for Pool to pore through.
Perhaps it helped that Pool was gifted technically, sufficiently so to attend Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York en route to a career as a freelance engineer assisting insurance companies with damage estimates during the claims process.
Those skills are needed during the Wilton Historical Society display ”“ while Pool, now retired, has a bottle of Elmer”™s glue at the ready for constant diorama repair, some other jobs require know-how ”“ this year a locomotive derailed and plummeted off the table, with the car valued at some $2,000.
On a Saturday that included a visit from Santa Claus, Pool and fellow trainman Jeff Headden (himself a former insurance industry retiree with General Reinsurance Corp. in Stamford) kept their eyes peeled for mishaps as swarms of kids crowded the scene.
“If anything is broken, it”™s mine,” Pool said and chuckled. “It it”™s not broken, it”™s not.”
