Western NC Railroad Life in Miniature

My wife and I recently took two of our grandchildren to an amazing exhibit of life in miniature, the HO-scale model railroad layout of the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club in Hendersonville, North Carolina (https://avmrc.com).

The 1902 Hendersonville train depot

We had taken three other of our grandchildren there several months earlier. They had enjoyed it immensely, and we thought the other grandkids would, too.

They certainly did. (I did, too. It made me antsy to build another layout of my own, but my wife rejected that thought out of hand after having suffered through my earlier layouts.)

The 22-foot by 100-foot layout is located in Hendersonville's railroad depot, which was built in 1902. It features many of the railroad communities and industries of Western North Carolina, running from Asheville toward Hickory, Spencer, Lenoir, Mortimer, and Edgemont, North Carolina, and to Spartanburg, South Carolina. The numerous tracks and sidings service various modeled industries from logging to furniture manufacturing and others that the region featured. The layout also includes a variety of locomotives and rolling stock used by those industries.

Artifacts of the museum part of the club lines the walls of the depot, exhibiting a large number of railroad-related objects and signs. It even has a 1920's era telegraph key that is connected to a computer program and monitor that allows visitors to practice sending messages by Morse code and challenging their speed on the key.

All of our grandchildren were fascinated by the operating layout, but by nothing more than the 60-some items they were to try finding on the printed scavenger hunt sheet that the club hands out to children. Our youngest grandkids enjoyed operating the separate "Thomas" and "Emily" layouts.

Outside, at the back of the depot, is an O-gauge layout, and some of the items on the scavenger hunt are also to be found there. At the end of the depot is a Southern Railroad caboose that one can enter, but on one of our trips it was locked.

There is one caution that you should note if you visit the layout: The local rescue mission is located across the street from the depot, and homeless individuals are sometimes present nearby, so keep close tabs on your children or grandchildren.

(Photos courtesy of Trip Advisor)