Doc’s Caboose

My son has always loved trains. It’s not an uncommon interest in young boys; I had the same fascination as a child, and I’ve grown up with an appreciation for them that still stands strong. Many kids will grow up with «Train Engineer» as one of their options they choose at a young age for future vocations, along with «Firefighter», «Policeman», or «Construction Worker». It’s work that (speaking from a decidedly male standpoint) is a manly and heroic archetype, and little boys want to grow up to be heroes.
The romance of the train, however, comes from the machine, itself. Have you ever stood next to a train? Felt the power of a diesel engine rumbling while it idles, rumbling even harder when it’s moving. It’s almost disturbing in a way… the sublimation of the immense power to move, to travel, to be virtually unstoppable. Heroic.
And you watch them. Unless you DO grow up to be an engineer, you just watch them. At crossings, while you sit in the car and count the cars. At overpasses of the train-​yards in the bottoms, wondering where this train came and that train went. Or, at home, on a track you created yourself and tend to meticulously, adopting the Engineer-​hero Archetype in the comfort of your own home.
It’s almost a lost art, really; train sets and dioramas and transformers and miniature cities and people and activities going on at N and HO scale. People would describe it as meditational. Maybe even addicting, as many hobbies that immerse you into a world you create for yourself can do. And there are yet few places to feed that fix.
What better place to do so than at a place called Doc’s Caboose, where you could literally step outside and watch track-​loads of metal roll past you, mere feet away. Doc’s is pretty much what you’d expect it to be: a store lined with shelves for you to create your own train-​based reality. And they’re happy to help you do so.
Part of what makes a great train-​set diorama the work of art that it is is in capturing the randomness of real life in your set. You buy stock trains, tracks, terrains, houses, and you make them look and seem as real as possible, through layout, arrangement, painting, and dust. The more real it is, the more effective the transference of reality it achieves… and the meditation of watching the train move through it’s realistic little world, powered by your switches, built by your hands, makes you The Grand Engineer, indeed.
It truly is a romance. And whether you’re a youngster just getting inot the hobby or a veteran builder who’s put miles of track to the test, stepping into a place like Doc’s brings the possibilities to life.
«Which car are you interested in getting, today?» I ask my son.
«Daddy, it’s too hard to choose!»
So, we’ll be back for more.