For SML resident Ken Salley, railroading runs in the family.

Salley's interest began when his father, an employee of the Danville & Western Railway, recruited some railroad buffs at the Danville train station to help him put together a layout as a surprise for his son. A 1950 Lionel starter set chugged around a simple oval track, but it was more than enough to delight a boy on Christmas morning.

The model-railroading bug went dormant for Salley while he finished school, started working and got established in his career. But before too long, he was drawn again to the hobby and began acquiring a roundhouse full of HO engines, cars and accessories -- many of the build-it-yourself variety that take a number of painstaking hours to model in exquisite detail.

A regular visitor to train shops wherever he traveled in his job with Alcon Labs Pharmaceuticals, Salley happened into Ken's Trains in Roanoke in early 1998. There he spotted a Lionel Bicentennial set of red-white-and-blue diesel engine and caboose plus 13 boxcars. Each was painted in recognition of one of the original colonies. Issued car-by-car as a collector's series throughout 1975 and '76, the Bicentennial set was all right there together ... and for sale. Salley snapped it up.

That purchase piqued his curiosity about collector editions, and later that year he became aware of Lionel's series of "I Love USA" boxcars. A resident of North Carolina at the time, Salley began searching for and bought the "I Love VA" car -- which Lionel had struck in 1987-- as a tribute to his Virginia-born wife Carolyn.

In fact, each of the "I Love (state name)" affinity series has its manufacturing date painted on the side: "I Love New York" was built in 1984, "Virginia is for Lovers" in '87 and Pennsylvania in '89. Name a state, Salley can tell you its year. After all, he has a boxcar for every state plus the matching engine and caboose (which Lionel finally offered last year) displayed on shelves in his train room.

According to those in the know at the Rail Yard Hobby Shop in Roanoke, arguably the local authority, it's the only complete set in Southwest Virginia.

Lionel began the series building one car a year, and then doubled the rate to make collecting less of a lifetime pursuit. The series of boxcars concluded in 2006 with Alaska and Hawaii, which Salley acquired for about $45 each. That's a fairly typical per-car price these days, though some of the less-common editions are significantly more pricey. Plan to spend $300 if you need "I Love Maryland" to complete your set.

"Once I got Virginia, I decided to go for all 51," said Salley. "That way, every visitor to my train room would have a nostalgic connection to at least one."

But wait a minute: Why 51 cars when there are 50 states?

"Lionel built two cars for New York, the second in '97 featuring -- in historic irony -- the Twin Towers," Salley explained.

A visit to his train room is a nostalgic journey in more ways than one. Once you've finished marveling at the state car sets, you can ogle his Lionel G-scale Christmas train comprised of the special-issue collector car for each year he and Carolyn have been married. That train -- each car the length of a football -- operates each holiday season on their sun porch overlooking Gills Creek.

Several Lionel engine-and-car sets from the 1950s also are on display, including a couple sizes of Norfolk & Western's #611, the historically significant, sleekly styled passenger-puller you can climb on at the Virginia Museum of Transportation in Roaoke. There's even a highly detailed operating model of the "Best Friends of Charleston" steamer -- also in O-gauge, but looking almost like an HO because of its diminutive size in real life. It's one of about 17 HO locomotives and attendant sets of running stock found around the room.

Another five Lionel sets are perched on parallel loops and sidings that ring the upper walls like cove molding, replete with detailed scale buildings, several of which -- like the nostalgic old-style McDonalds drive-in -- come to life at the push of a button.

A huge table-over-cabinets fills the center of the room, enclosing a pool-table-sized open core from which Salley can access scenery and wiring from the inside. This layout's siding-and-switch-laden trackbed, buildings and mountainous landscape simulate miles of railroad, meticulously modeled by Salley's steady hands. Every tree and shrub, for example, is painstakingly created using vegetation kit frameworks onto which layer after layer of multicolored fluff are attached (with repeated spritzes of hairspray) to duplicate the look of fall foliage.

And for fans of the really miniature: Salley's collection of thumbnail-sized Z-scale engines and cars run silently around a tweezers-detailed 4-by-4-foot tabletop mountainscape that he began building in the trailer the Salleys have occupied while building their home in The Cape.

Carolyn Salley said she completely supports her husband's hobby.

"There's always something he wants that makes the perfect gift for any occasion," she said.

As for Salley, he treasures the time he spends puttering around his lake-level hobby room.

"Model railroading is a never-ending diorama," he said. "You can always think of something to make a layout more realistic. It's a great outlet for your creative streak."

JERRY HALE | Special to Laker Weekly 721-7222

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