I can’t pass up a toy train museum. Wayne Ruland built this one in his yard in a residential section of Heber Springs. As I got out of my car, he came out of his house to greet me.
Wayne offered a tour, and I took him up on it. He explained that his father loved toy trains but was too poor to buy one, so he made his own. These are cars he built himself.
Wayne then showed me several that he had made when he was a kid. As he walked me around the display, he pointed out how much of it was constructed of found materials — lightbulb boxes, toilet paper rolls, buttons, etc. The downstairs section was standard gauge, and after showing around, he flipped some switches and got two trains running for a couple minutes.
There was another large set-up upstairs, this one in a smaller gauge (but not as small as HO).
There was even a roundhouse with a working turntable. The whole thing is set up so that as many as 16 people can work together to operate the trains, the switches, the turntable, etc.
Wayne set four trains in motion, and they ran all the way around the room on shelves.
There were other tracks on a lower level beneath the tables along with additional trains, buildings, and train memorabilia. There were even trail brochures and photos on the ceiling. It was close to visual overload.
Wayne’s passion is to invite kids with various learning difficulties to visit and work with his set-up. He teaches them how to make their own trains, buildings, and tracks and gets them to work together in ways they would normally be too shy to do. You can see two of them in the background of the above photo.
It was all very cool, and I stayed probably close to an hour. Of course I liked it. In many places, it reminded me of my wall.
