Tracking holiday memories: Train buff sets up library display in honor of late wife

Toy trains sometimes carry more than childlike imagination around the Christmas tree.

For one Conifer resident, they carry loads of remembrance.

Jim Marski has a passion for diminutive trains, and he’s installed a train exhibit in the Conifer Library’s display case just in time for Christmas.

The Conifer Library, tucked into Conifer High School, is open to both students and the public. The outside of the library faces into the school, and Marski’s goal is to make it look like any hobby store window at Christmastime, complete with icicle lights.
From inside the library, his pint-sized panorama looks like a floor of a home, with a Christmas tree, a wrapping-paper background, presents and a complete toy train set, ready for play.

Marski’s reason for the homespun setup is a lot closer to his heart than kids, Christmastime and even trains.

Marski and his wife, Peg, were frequent visitors to the library and its extensive books-on-tape collection. Peg had vision difficulties due to diabetes, and the trips to the library and the audio stories were a window on a world that was slowly fading from her sight.

Library staff befriended the Marskis as they became regular visitors.

“This is home for me,” Marski said.

Last November, Peg died of complications from her long fight with diabetes. Marski said some wives are not happy about the time and money husbands spend on the two-rail addiction, but Peg loved the trains and was supportive of his hobby, as well as a multitude of train displays throughout their home.

Marski asked the library if the display could be set up each year as a celebration of Peg’s memory. The library staff had no problem saying yes.

Robin Liebert, Conifer library supervisor, enjoys the display as much as the kids who come to see it through the end of December.

“We’re delighted this is here. It makes excitement for the kids, the library and families,” Liebert said.

This is the second year for the annual display, and this year’s theme is Toy Trains for Christmas.

Nearly 1,500 students at Conifer High walk by the display each day during school hours, and Liebert notices students glancing in the library windows at the display.

“They love it, but they won’t admit it,” Liebert said with a smile.

Marski is president of the Rocky Mountain Division of the Train Collectors Association has no problem admitting his love of trains.

“This stuff I had as a kid is my interest,” Marski said.

His first train set was a Christmas gift given him as a child, and he saw his diesel dreams being pulled along with the chugging engines and melancholy whistles.

Marski loved trains so much he started a hobby store, Depot G Hobbies in west Chicago, selling top-shelf train components. He also designed the graphics for the cars and sold them out of the storefront. He created replicas of rail cars with logos and emblems, some now lost in the roundhouse of time.

Trains are an acknowledgement of the past and a glimpse into the future, according to Marski.

“Trains represent the outside world and contain, on the side of the cars, names from all over the country,” Marski said. “It allows people to dream of what was out there.”

While avid train collectors wear their hobbies on their sleeves, some hide their addiction to these small but significant toys.
“There’s a tremendous number of adults who still have their toys (trains),” Marski said.

Collectors and enthusiasts scour train shows, eBay and sales to find unique or original pieces. But surprisingly, the best sources are outside the train community, at estate sales and garage sales. In the economy of trains, there are two markets: the old collectibles and new productions.

“Sometimes people just throw old sets away, not knowing that they’re rare finds, and someone may want them and treasure them,” Marski said.

Marski admits that sometimes there are so many items to collect, it’s like being a kid in a candy store.

“It’s the hunt, the collecting and trying to find the pieces. It’s a disease on some level,” Marski said with a laugh.

Marski is partial to the old trains —not the new ones with lots of electronics, digital sounds and remote switches.

The owner of almost 300 train sets, he regularly hosts an open house at his mountain home at which other train buffs come to discuss topics from engines to cabooses.

“Trains bring everyone together,” Marski said. “(Trains) are a great way to have fun and socialize.”

“I don’t like the idea of trains on shelves,” he said. “It’s sad when they aren’t being used.”

In keeping with his train-sharing philosophy, Marski opens the display case at the library after the 4 p.m. story time for children on Mondays and Tuesdays. Kids come to see the trains close-up, and some bring small plastic animals to put aboard the train and watch them go round and round.

As the distinct sounds of a toy train echo through the library, the whistles and chugging of the locomotives call children and adults alike.

Mardi Rumin of Conifer brought her daughter, Alissa, 7, to the library to hear a story and see the trains.

“It marks the holiday,” Rumin said, “the idea of Christmas and trains.”

From the High Timber Times December 16, 2009