PARKERSBURG - The Mid-Ohio Valley Model Railroad Club expected as many as 400 children and adults for its 16th annual Model Train Show and Sale in the student activities center Saturday at West Virginia University at Parkersburg.
"It's a sort of flea market for all different scales of model trains," said co-organizer Mark Suek with the club.
The event included 76 vendor tables with model railroad equipment and railroad artifacts, railroad books and magazines and many other train-related items on display and for sale along with operating layouts in multiple scales.
"This is the biggest event the club puts on each year," Suek said. "This is the largest number of dealer and vendor tables than any year in the past."
The majority of the people who attended the event were young children, most boys, who ran up to each table of displays with smiles of delight across their faces.
"These two boys just love trains," said Jess Blair, of Mineral Wells, who brought his sons Remington, 4, and Isaac, 2, to the show. "Anything about trains, they just go crazy over."
Chuck Willey, owner of West Virginia Hobbies and Crafts in Teays Valley, said he has attended at least the last 13 years of the show and sale.
"It's one of the nicest one-day events in the state," he said. "A lot of it has to do with the local club, which supports me so I come here to support them."
Suek said most people who are collectors of model railroads got started in the hobby as children.
"Probably 80 percent of model railroaders started with a train around the Christmas tree," he said. "This show allows everyone who had a train set as a child to reconnect with that."
A spokeswoman at the event said while attendance was about average to previous events, the closure of Interstate 77 near the university's exit may have kept some people from making it to the show.
"I've heard a number of people complain that the interstate closure made it difficult for them to get here and since the attendance is a little down, I have to wonder if some people didn't come because of it," she said. "Either way, people are here from all over the state."
