You board the Northern Neck Rail Road at the depot in Heathsville, riding in the cab with the engineer so you can take in all the sights and sounds.
During your round-trip journey, you travel parallel to Main Street in Reedville, cross the Great Wicomico River, go to White Stone and Irvington, where you can hop on the trolley line to Fredericksburg and Tappahannock.
On to Kinsale and Weems you travel, to the railroad service yard at Irvington, behind the beach pavilion at White Stone, back to Reedville, down a small grade to Fairport with its fish factories, then back to Heathsville.
Tina McCloud
The Kilmarnock layout includes the intersection of routes 3 and 200, with theFairfax cinema and other landmark buildings in town.
Welcome to “The Railroad That Never Was.” Or “the railroad that could have been” if investors had bought enough stock to build it 100 years ago.
The Northern Neck Railway and Power Company was formed on March 23, 1920, by offering shares of stock priced at $100. The company proposed to construct an electrified rail line between Fredericksburg and Lancaster County and to provide electric power to the region. The corporate charter included plans to build a streetcar line as well as passenger freight service. No rails were ever built and the charter was terminated in 1924.
But you can take an imaginary tour of where the tracks might have been via a video in the model train shop at the Reedville Fishermen’s Museum. The video is a perfect introduction to the monumental, permanent model train layout of the area’s land and water, with buildings and boats painstakingly crafted by volunteers since about 1997.
Tina McCloud
Museum volunteer George Koman describes the intricate models along MainStreet in Reedville, including the Sears-Roebuck house whose components were brought in by steamboat.
The trains run from 10am-12pm Thursdays, the volunteers’ usual work time, and will run during the upcoming Antique and Classic Boat Show 10am-4pm September 13. There are extended hours during the Thanksgiving-Christmas holidays.
The model shop was originally set up to make the museum appealing to more people, especially children, at Christmas time, according to the video narration by train shop founder George Frayne. To tie the trains to the museum’s mission of preserving the area’s fishing heritage, volunteers built scale models of the many fish-processing plants in the area in the early years of the 20th century. There were about a dozen factories at one time, said volunteer George Koman.
The layouts now include hundreds of commercial and residential buildings, some still standing and some long-gone, in Reedville, Kilmarnock, White Stone, Irvington and Fredericksburg, plus sailboats, fishing vessels and steamships that were this area’s link to the outside world back in the day.
Tina McCloud
This representation of old Fairport includes the Fisher Fish Factory and Cockrell’s Seafood.
No detail is overlooked, even the teeny-tiny dog with his favorite teeny-tiny fire hydrant in Fredericksburg.
While the volunteers are of a certain age, they keep up with technology. The original (larger) layout is partially digital and the newer (Kilmarnock) is fully digital, says volunteer Larry McMurray. The original video, done in 2006, is being updated to include the display for Kilmarnock, the latest layout. Bill Garvey, an editor/videographer with NFL Films in New Jersey, was recently at the shop. He and his dad, volunteer Will Garvey, attached a Go-Pro to an engine to zoom around the Kilmarnock layout for new footage.
Tina McCloud
Will Garvey, left, and his son, Bill Garvey, make an adjustment to the GoPro mounted on a model train engine to video the Kilmarnock layout. Will is a museum volunteer. Bill, an editor/videographer with NFL Films, is updating the railroad video.
Bob Dillon, a volunteer in the shop since the beginning, explains that the generation whose fondest wish was to find a model train under the Christmas tree is older now. There were model trains, then cars, then dating, then life, he says, and the younger generations have not filled the gap.
“We’d love to welcome new train enthusiasts to the museum,” said Shauna McCranie, the museum’s executive director. “We hope people will consider joining us and learning how to operate our beautiful exhibit. No experience necessary, just a willingness to learn.”
The model train shop is included in admission to the museum or to the September 13 Boat Show, which is a separate event. For information about volunteering or admission, 804-453-6529, office@rfmuseum.org or www.rfmuseum.org.
