High-tech model trains stop at GC Fair

MOSES LAKE — This is not your grandfather’s electric train set. 

“In the old days, you had a dial,” said Steve Riegel, who oversaw the model railroad display in the Youth Building at the Grant County Fair last week. “You turned it one way and (the trains) all went forward. Then you stop it, you put it in reverse, it all goes in reverse. In today’s world, we can have (multiple trains) on the same track, any direction, any speed.” 

This is the first year the fair has hosted a display from Inland Northwest Free-moN, the model rail enthusiast group based in Spokane, Riegel said. The “N” in the name refers to the size of the trains: N Scale is the smallest standard size of model trains, at 1/160 the size of the real thing. “Free-mo” is short for free modular, a standard that allows modelers to design their own sections of track and fit them together with other creators’ designs. The display at the fair comprised 23 modules, all connected so trains could roll freely. 

“The way we have it set up allows for continuous operation,” Riegel said. “So we can go from one end, make a loop, come back to the other, make a loop, and then we can just keep going back and forth.” 

Riegel and fellow enthusiast Matthew Martin controlled the rail network through phone apps, using a system called Digital Command Control, or DCC. 

“Today's model trains are like today's RC cars,” Riegel said. “Each engine has its own receiver. The track sends the transmission through the rails. It has a transmitter that hooks up to the track, and then that transmitter hooks up to a computer, and then we can just go from computer to railroad. That’s how simple it is.”

“DCC (has) all the individual functions for headlights, ditch lights, sound, fine tuning the motors so you can speed-match them so they run in the same run at the same pull,” Martin said.

Riegel is a former Moses Lake resident, he said. He’d been planning the display for about three years when the fair reached out to him, he said. 

“When I was a kid growing up here, I always imagined what it'd be like if we had trains (at the fair),” he said. “I never saw trains in here. I always wanted to see some model trains. Now I'm an adult and I finally can do it.” 

    Today’s model railroads are a sophisticated system controlled by computer or phone apps that allow multiple trains to travel at different speeds or in different directions.