Model railroader keeps hobby on grand scale

Barry Bogs spends his days working as a service representative for Pitney Bowes, but his true passion is his lifelong hobby of building model trains and railroads.

He even says a great deal of his success at his day job comes from his hobby.

“I attribute a lot of getting this job because I worked on trains as a child, and I learned the mechanical fields, electrical fields and troubleshooting,” Bogs said. “That just kind of crossed over to the job I do today.”

His love for trains began at an extremely early age, when he was so young that he can barely remember it himself. For his birthday one year, his parents bought him a tricycle and a train. Only one of them truly resonated with him.

“(My parents) told me that I pulled that train around the house for a month before I ever looked at the tricycle,” Bogs said.

He focused on small-scale sets before graduating to larger G-scale trains around 25 years ago. His aptitude for locomotives always had been apparent, but projects started to become truly amazing with the larger-scale trains.

After his parents took him on a trip to Durango, Colo., in 1969, Bogs so enjoyed what he saw that he started labeling his towns and his train equipment based on what he had seen in Colorado. To this day, his major home railroad set-up remains a replica of this locale. Unfortunately, due to the specific nature of what he was looking for, many of the types of trains were unavailable.

“They didn’t offer all of the locomotives and cars that I wanted,” he said. “It was sort of necessity. I started building my own equipment.”
The upstairs level of his house is now a monument to his life’s work. His Colorado replica train set takes up multiple rooms, and it is so accurate that even the trees and scenery that surround the tracks are exact replicas.

“It goes through the walls, through the closets, across the foyer,” Bogs said.

Bogs is understandably proud of his work, and virtually everyone who comes across it is stunned by its craftsmanship. He recounts the story of a woman who summed it up quite succinctly when she said during an open house, “This is the most fabulous thing I have ever seen.”

Chris Marshall is a freelance writer. He can be reached at neighborhoods@chron.com.

ABOUT BARRY BOGS
AGE: 55
OCCUPATION: Service representative for Pitney Bowes
COMMUNITY CONNECTION: Lives in Spring
FAST FACT: Regularly participates in model train shows and operating sessions.