FLawlEss.(model railroad fans)(Brief Article)

A foamer is an exceptionally avid hobbyist. Some of the model-railroad foamers who gather every fourth Tuesday or so in Phil Chiavetta's garage, in New Jersey, are the species of train buff likely to hoard branch-line schedules and jubilee tickets, and some of them just really like toy trains. Chiavetta is a dentist. He lives in Harrington Park, a few miles north of the George Washington Bridge. In his garage, he has built a replica of the railroad line belonging to the New York Central which ran along the western shore of the Hudson forty years ago. The garage isn't deep enough for the tracks to run north to south, so the main part of Chiavetta's layout has the shape of a horseshoe. The southern terminus resembles Jersey City, and is called Pavonia. It has brownstone buildings, a turning globe on top of its newspaper office, and an illuminated sign on the Shamrock Hotel that lights up one leaf at a time. Chiavetta has given the towns what he calls "mythological names" because, as he says, "railroaders are notorious nitpickers, and, if I give real names to places, people will show up and criticize." Chiavetta is proud of his setup and does not appreciate criticism.

Between fifteen and twenty buffs attend Chiavetta's sessions, which usually begin at seven-thirty in the evening and end at around eleven. The majority live in New Jersey, but several--a set designer, an architect, and a guy who owns a custom metalworks--come from Manhattan, and a guy who builds model railroads for rich people comes from Long Island. In Chiavetta's garage, it is always February 18, 1961, the day he turned seventeen. From a weather service he learned that there had been snow the day before, so the buildings, the tracks, and the fields have a powdering of pulverized marble, held down with glue. The buffs run about forty trains, some of which are replicas of those that actually operated on that day and some of which Chiavetta has invented--the railroad had eliminated steam engines several years earlier, but he runs some anyway. On the wall is a clock that takes about eight seconds to advance one minute. The first train leaves at five-thirty in the morning, and the last arrives at around ten-thirty at night, depending on whether there have been any collisions or derailments or breakdowns.

A dispatcher with a clipboard stands in the center of the horseshoe and, in a loud voice, makes announcements, ...