LOCO FOR MOTION

MEADOW LAKES — Until last month, there were two sets of train tracks running through the neighborhood.

One was the Alaska Railroad’s line that starts in Seward and ends in Fairbanks, and the other was an O Scale model designed to encapsulate the look of the railroad’s track between Houston and Denali Park.

Mick Nolan spent hundreds of hours, thousands of dollars and nearly 10 years constructing the 1,200-square-foot trainscape where ¼ inch equals 1 foot.

Nolan is an airline pilot for Icelandic Airlines and said he has flown planes professionally his whole adult life.

But he has a new hobby now.

“I opened up my mind to other things besides flying airplanes and now I’ve gone hog wild,” Nolan said. “And I quickly found out the fun was in building it.”

On the heels of the Frontiersman’s Jan. 4 interview with Nolan, he and his train adviser Dave Hikel began tearing apart their years of hard work.

“Not too many people want a 1,200-square-foot model railroad in a $600,000 custom home,” Nolan said.

He said he’d been home since mid-December getting his last kicks in playing with his trains.

Hikel said train buffs usually start with a loop around the Christmas tree.

And sometimes they end up where Nolan is: needing to add six extra circuit breakers to his Meadow Lakes home just to power his trains and their specialty lighting.

He and his wife Michelle are selling their home off Beverly Lakes Road and plan to relocate to Michigan after 40 years in Alaska. There, Nolan said, he plans to begin building an HO Scale model railroad.

His O Scale collection of MTH Electric Trains included 26 locomotives, about 200 passenger and freight cars and 72 electrically operated switches. All of Nolan’s rolling stock, locomotives, bridges and transformers were being packed and shipped to a buyer in Seattle, he said. “This will be the largest railroad that I’ll ever do.”

High-tech, high-end trains

But before that, Nolan gave his model train setup one last go around the tracks.

Hikel said high tech trains such as the ones made by MTH Electric Trains began using software called a Digital Command System in 2002.

The Washington man said he has a degree in automotive engineering, but he’s made a career out of doing tech support for trains.

“Mick’s is definitely on the larger end of the spectrum,” Hikel said of the various trainscapes he’s helped to build.

It was Hikel who designed Nolan’s track plan and who painted the scenery, mountains and landscapes the trains sailed past in the 20-minute pre-recorded session the two used to demonstrate what today’s high-tech, high-end trains can do.

Autopilot includes a set speed that the train maintains as it navigates around the tracks loops, through its tunnels and across its bridges, Nolan said. “It’s like cruise control.”

A large remote control lets him control track switches and speed manually, too.

“Push this button,” he said. “Take it up to 50 mph.”

That’s scale miles per hour. Each engine has an optical sensor that tells the software how fast the train is moving, Hikel said.

Trains like this one have digital sounds, too, and smoke that smells like diesel — Proto Smoke — is sold by the bottle. It’s one of several different scented fluids sold for these trains, Nolan said.

And the train’s engines also have speakers that add another layer of realism to the scene.

“Be careful on the steps,” the recorded conductor’s voice says as passengers prepare to disembark at familiar stops such as Anchorage, Wasilla, Denali Park and Fairbanks.

It makes the sounds of brakes, of the wheels traveling over the railroad ties and it includes actual recordings for the kind of engine that would operate the full-size version of each model train.

At the end of the 20-minute show, the last train parked itself in the train yard.

“Take care, see you soon,” a recorded voice says.

Dedicated to the wild places

Hidden beneath the plywood bench that held the model train, Nolan said, was about 15,000 feet of wiring that took him about a year to install.

“This is just about as high tech as it gets,” he said.

Hikel also taught Nolan how to lay and bend the track as needed. Nolan said train track is only sold in straight lengths and must be carefully bent to fit the plans.

“I did the math to figure out the curvature and make it fit all in the allotted space,” he said.

As a child, Nolan received his first electric train from his father. But he stumbled back into his love for trains at a Denver training session in 2003 when his co-pilot took him to the Red Caboose in Denver and that Christmas, Santa — also known as his wife Michelle — brought him his first O Scale train.

“Now I’ve been to every major hobby shop in the country,” Nolan said.

The next year, he connected with train adviser Hikel who he flew up four of five times that first year. Hikel would show Nolan how to do the work and Nolan supplied the labor. He said if he hadn’t done most of the work himself, the cost would have been astronomical.

“If it was going to get done, I had to get it done,” Nolan said.

He said Hikel was also instrumental in creating the scenery the trains traveled through and making it seem like the mountains matched the scale of the trains, buildings and people included.

Nolan said he took his plane up in mid-fall and took photos of the colors below in order to make the scene as realistic as possible.

“I knew what mountains looked like in Washington, but not here,” Hikel said.

In addition to railroad crossing with motorists waiting to cross, buildings, a landing strip with runway lights, a tunnel and telephone lines stretched between buildings, the model also included abundant Alaska wildlife, such as moose, bear, Dall sheep and salmon.

A mother bear and her cubs eye delicious red salmon suspended in a blue epoxy glacial stream.

“This is dedicated to the wild places in Alaska,” Nolan said.

Of all the model train setups he’s worked on, Hikel said he’s only worked on one that is more extensive than Nolan’s. All total, he said, Nolan’s collection ranked among the fourth or fifth largest in the Pacific Northwest.

“The typical person doing larger layouts like this is a middle-aged man who had trains as a kid and remembers them fondly,” Hikel said.

Contact Heather A. Resz at heather.resz@frontiersman.com or 352-2268.