A man named John Allen died of a heart attack in 1973. He left behind a railroad empire centered on a house in Monterey, California. John Allen’s railroad empire was one of the most highly regarded in the world, and he, himself, was one of the most highly-regarded railroaders in the world.

And yet only a very few people ever heard of him, even during his lifetime, because his railroad empire was contained entirely within the 1200-square-foot basement of a house he bought specifically for the unfinished basement. His empire, the Gorre & Daphetid (pronounced Gory and Defeated) Railroad, was a work of art within the model railroad community. His railroad covered about half the area of the basement, which, in case you don’t know, is an exceptionally large model railroad. Its scenery consisted largely of huge mountain ranges, with valleys extending to the floor, deep enough for the model railroad operators to walk through, and mountains that extended to head height. He constructed detailed models and populated the scenery with little 1:87 scale figures. He invited friends over to run the railroad, modeling not only the physical appearance of the trains but also their actual operation.

His model railroad was almost certainly the best-known and most admired layout in the world, largely because of the many articles he wrote about it in model railroad magazines. It was museum quality. His layout had mythical status, and he was the hero in the myth.

Ten days after John Allen died from a heart attack, fire destroyed most of the Gorre & Dephetid Railroad. A group of his friends had held an operating session, and someone apparently dropped a tarp over a heater, which later ignited.

It was a shock within that world. It had elements of tragedy, tinged with absurdity. John Allen was, based on everything I have read, obsessed with model railroading. An inheritance plus some business gains and wise investments allowed him to retire at 40 and devote the remaining 20 years of his life to building his railroad empire and spreading his message of fine modeling to the faithful. It apparently was his world. It was as if he lived in his model railroad and visited the rest of us in our world on occasion.

I don’t completely understand that intense devotion to what seems like a trivial activity. But then I can’t honestly say that I understand that kind of intense devotion to much of anything. I’m interested in a lot of things, but I can’t imagine devoting my life almost exclusively to any one of them.

My father was interested in model railroads and dabbled with them for most of his adult life. Of course that influenced my brother and me. When we were little boys sharing a bedroom in the little four-room house where we grew up, my father built a folding table to hold a model railroad for us. It folded up against the wall between two sets of shelves, and dropped down and unfolded between our beds. We had our own American Flyer train set, which we preferred over Lionel because it had two rails instead of three, and was thus more realistic. My father had his HO scale models.

I continued to read model railroad magazines for a long time, up into my teen years. I imagined building a layout, and even bought some of the equipment to do it. But I never did it. Even today I like model trains. Not so much model railroading, but the engines themselves. I don’t do anything with them, and haven’t for years, but I occasionally wish I could find a good model of a steam locomotive.

I ran across this old HO scale model of the General while cleaning out my mother’s house. This was a birthday or Christmas present from more than 50 years ago.

I have this …

… because I can’t have this.

This is the real thing, a narrow-gauge steam engine with train. It’s a former Denver & Rio Grande Western RR engine, now running as the Durango and Silverton tourist line. This was taken in Silverton, Co.

The General, for those who never saw the Disney movie The Great Locomotive Chase, was the steam engine that James Andrew’s Union raiders commandeered from around Kennesaw, Ga.,  and ran north towards Chattanooga, destroying as much of the Confederate rail lines and as many bridges as they could. The Confederates eventually captured him and his crew and hanged most of them.

I wonder what drives people (almost always males for some reason) to build and have and look at models. I think part of it is simply to be able to own things that you can’t ordinarily own: fighter jets, expensive sports cars, ships, and, yes, steam locomotives. You can hold them in your hand and imagine operating them. Model railroaders often push imagination further towards reality by operating their scale railroads as much like the real thing as possible. I believe that when they go into that world, it’s very close to a real world, at least for a while.

But the depth of the appeal still escapes me.

This fits in some way with something else I have been thinking about, but it’s going to have to percolate for a while before I can write about it.