Working on the Railroad Story by Sara Hilton | Photos by Nanci Heiney
Through the doors of a nondescript building in Blissfield is a miniature world of wonder. Trains whirl around the Appalachian Mountains, through tiny quaint towns and stop at industrial steel mills. There are bridges over rivers, shipping yards, schools and churches, and for the holidays, there is of course, a Christmas train. This is the Blissfield Model Railroad Club, a group of model railroaders from across the southeast Michigan and Northwest Ohio area who build and operate a large HO scale model railroad based on the Chesapeake & Ohio and Clinchfield railroads in Ohio, Kentucky, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. The detail is extraordinary. “The guys that generate the scenes 28
just have the most amazing artistic talent,” said Joe Watts, who serves as the club’s treasurer. “For instance, the Appalachian Mountains take a lot of trees. We developed a way of making HO scale trees from a weed. "We import the weed, cut off the stem, and it leaves a three-to-fiveinch tuff of greenery that we put together and paint to make realisticlooking trees"
The Blissfield Model Railroad Club started in 1992 with a group of enthusiasts who wanted to create a portable layout that could be entered in contests. Within two years, the club was showing in Indiana, Ohio, and in Michigan, and was constantly winning first place awards for their layout. With the goal in mind to set up a permanent layout, the group made arrangements to rent the
