A large model railroad display will be running on Heritage Day from about 8:15 a.m. until about 4:30 p.m.  The display is a modular layout first designed as a unique concept and built by Bill Benson of Richardson about twenty years ago for a model railroad club in the Plano area. 

The original display suffered some severe damage in a single-vehicle accident and went into storage until early this year when Bill and Price Bradshaw began re-working and rebuilding the layout to put on display at Bonham’s Visitors’ Center for Heritage Day.  They brought the 14 modules to the Visitors’ Center, hauled them upstairs and began working on them in the room that used to be Sam Rayburn’s office.  Since that space is not air-conditioned, work most of this year was restricted to morning hours until the layout could be moved into the large room downstairs.

The display you will see embodies the help of several friends we’ve made while building the layout.  Louis Bourett of Whitewright not only helped cut roadbed, but also generously loaned the use of his tools.  He also consumes books on railroad history and is a walking encyclopedia of train information!   Leeman Sewell has provided a passenger train pulled by a Hudson steam locomotive from the 1950’s and many of the operating accessories and a village of buildings, miniature autos, and scale people.  Both Louis and Leeman will be helping to operate the layout and answering questions about it and the hobby of model railroading.

One of the rather unique features of this display is that it will accommodate three sizes of trains: Standard gauge (primarily made by Lionel, Ives, American Flyer, and MTH), with a scale of 1:25; “O” gauge (made by Lionel, Atlas, and Weaver, 1:48; and “O-27” (made by K-Line, Lionel, and Marx), with a scale of about 1:52.  The innermost loop of track has five rails and will permit simultaneous operation of a Standard gauge train and an “O” gauge train.  The two outside loops will accept “O” gauge or “O-27.”

Although only one accessory is now interactive for “the young and the young at heart,” future plans for the layout include making many more of them capable of being operated by visitors viewing the trains.  

The layout now is basically a rather large toy train layout, but Price and Bill envision it evolving and growing over the years to represent the route of the former Texas & Pacific line between Bonham and Honey Grove, with miniature models of real buildings in the two towns.  If you would like to join in the effort to make it grow, be sure to leave your name and number with somebody at the layout!  Or if you just have some trains you’d like to see run, bring them by and take a turn at the throttle!