The Hentschel Train Depot opened at 6 a.m. and operated until dusk on a driveway in Homewood as three brothers helped recreate the joy of model trains for themselves, their children and grandchildren.
Brother John came up from southern Illinois and brother Richard drove in from Aurora to help Tom of Homewood spread out 450 feet of track – about four scale miles – on his Hickory Road driveway on Saturday, Aug. 13. It was the fifth time the brothers have done a big train event, and the third time it’s been in Homewood.
Tom had a concrete driveway laid several years ago. It gives the Hentschels a long, smooth surface to use as the rail yard. The configuration changes every time they get together for their day of train fun. This year bridges extended track up onto the deck and around the patio furniture.
Between the three brothers, the joint collection is more than 400 Lionel cars and engines. They don’t need an excuse to keep adding to the collection, it’s more an issue of space to store everything, Tom said.
Tom’s daughter, Holly Hentschel Dominik, an art teacher, has been adding to the stockpile. She orders new box cars and decorates them with graffiti. The kids and the uncles get a new version every year, and at one point during the day all the graffiti box cars are strung together as a train that takes over the track.
“Some of the oldest trains here are from when we were kids,” Tom said. “Trains are just part of the family.” His dad was a landscaper. During the winter months he spent time setting up train sets in the basement for his five boys to enjoy. Dad’s collection is mixed in with what the brothers have. In addition, some of the pieces that make up a village were their grandfather’s.
Richard’s grandson, Mason Foss, 4, was the engineer for the day. With remote in hand, he kept the trains running. Tom said each car has a connector clip, commonly referred to as a coupler, but sometimes the cars decouple so an adult would come to the rescue and reattach the cars to keep everything running smoothly. When necessary, a rubber band can be a simple fix.
At one point, Mason asked his Uncle Tom to run the Rio Grande train, a string of passenger cars painted gold like the trains operated by the now defunct Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad. Mason loves watching train videos, especially the video of the Amtrak Acela, the latest passenger train serving the U.S. Right now, he’s very interested in the model five-car train set selling for about $2,500. His mom said ‘no.’
Many of the cars in the Hentschels’ fleet have names of bygone railroads, from the long-haulers to the regionals.
“There used to be hundreds of them in the United States. Some of them were just 10 miles long. They’d haul coal from one town to another,” Tom said.