Farmer builds intricate model train, miniature town in basement

(Aging Untold) — Harry Jenkins lives on a sprawling 199-acre cattle farm in Vale, North Carolina, about an hour north of Charlotte. When he isn’t tending to his cattle, he’s tending to the train station — one inside his home.

Jenkins negotiated the space with his wife when they built the house in 2000.

“You can have anything in the house you want, but I’ve got to have a train room in the basement,” Jenkins said. “I didn’t get it big enough.”

A hobby rooted in family history

Jenkins said his father introduced him to the model train hobby in the 1940s, and he still has the first train he ever received.

“That’s a 1949 model,” Jenkins said, pointing to a train. “It runs as good as anything out there.”

His miniature town features nine full trains, six of which can run at one time.

It also includes a highway where cars and trucks pass by, a stockyard, a depot, fairgrounds and a village where each business is named after one of Jenkins’ nine grandchildren. A separate tribute honors his father, who spent years building transmission towers.

“It’s more than trains,” Jenkins said. “That layout, to me, is a little chunk of real life.”

A hobby finding fewer new enthusiasts

Jenkins acknowledged that model trains have become harder to find in mainstream retail, now available mostly in specialty shops.

“It really is an old man’s hobby,” he said. “There’s too much for children now. They don’t get excited when they hear a train whistle four or five miles away.”

While Jenkins’ display is already considered one of the most intricate in the Carolinas, he said it will never be finished.

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