McHenry’s John Smith raises his Christmas train sets to an art form, and one is in the railway museum in Union

In John Smith’s mind, model train sets go hand-in-hand with celebrating the Christmas holidays.

“Back in the 1950s and ‘60s, every boy I know got model trains ... for Christmas,” Smith said.

His parents couldn’t afford much during his upbringing in McHenry, but Smith remembers looking at the illustrated Lionel Train catalog and wishing he could have some of the elaborate sets the company advertised. Fast forward to the 1970s, when his own children were small.

“I wanted a train for them to have around the Christmas tree,” said Smith, now 72. “Before you knew it, it grew into, for me, an all-consuming hobby.”

These days, Smith’s train set is a simple setup. He has it in his garage at the McHenry Riverwalk townhomes on Waukegan Road. On the weekends the last two holiday seasons, he’s put up signs in the riverwalk, inviting families to come see the Polar Express train he’s set up.

His bigger set – the one that became all-consuming for many years – now sits at the Illinois Railway Museum in Union. That setup measures 8 feet by 35 feet, with portions “reaching to the ceiling” according to magazine articles written about it. It connects portions of Chicago’s Loop, including a replica of Union Station, to the North Pole.

“It is a great attraction,” Rick Marzec said. He is the model railroad curator at the Union museum. During their Happy Holiday Railway event weekends, they may have 200 people an hour, and up to 1,500 people a day, stop to see Smith’s donated trains and the others on display.

“It is an interactive layout,” he said of Smith’s design. “Big or little kids can press a button to operate trains, trolleys, accessories, crossing gates. There are 25 buttons that kids can go and press throughout the whole layout. Right in front of them, something happens,” Marzec said.

The number of buttons and the ability to control the trains and other features of the setup make it special, Marzec said, adding that most train setups may have three or four buttons.

Smith downplays the setup he has in his garage now.

“I made a little board that folds up against the wall. Come Christmas, it comes down. It is all decorated to invite the kids over.”

For the last two years - since the McHenry Riverwalk Shoppes opened - Smith has put a sign by the riverwalk bridge over Boone Creek, inviting people at the park to come see his train.

“Kids get a kick out of it,” Smith said. “They get a candy cane and then off they go.”

He can also talk to the adults about the riverwalk. Smith is chairman of the McHenry Riverwalk Foundation.

“I am so connected to the riverwalk, and people from McHenry or who are visiting, they have no idea what it is,” he said.

When he offered his elaborate train display to the museum in 2021, the board there didn’t know what to expect either.

Before moving next to the riverwalk, Smith and his wife had a house on Green Street, across from Knox Park. Built in 2000, the attic space became the home for Smith’s model railroad. “It had a huge attic, so I finished it off. It was this massive open area.”

He did most of the work on the train setup himself, until about 2012. A civil engineer by profession, Smith enjoyed collecting Christmas and Chicago-themed trains and setting them up, but didn’t enjoy sculpting the trees and mountains or the artistry of it.

He found a company in Dallas that did exactly that kind of work. So he took the set apart, sent it to Texas in a moving truck, and had that company design the environment.

“I wanted the Polar Express on one side and Chicago on the other,” Smith said.

At the holidays, Smith invited people to visit the Green Street house to see the train. He’d ask for donations to the McHenry FISH food pantry during those events, which could draw a few hundred visitors.

But after his wife passed away in 2017, that house was too much for him. Smith moved to the Waukegan Road home at about the same time he donated his model train display.

The railway museum’s last day for the 2024 season was Dec. 23, but they will reopen at Easter for their Bunny Trolley Hop, then and are open daily Memorial Day through Labor Day.

Smith still visits his train set there, from time to time.

“I have different things keeping me busy now - now it is the riverwalk” and volunteering at the FISH food pantry, he said.

He still loves showing his trains, too.

“The best part is watching the kids giggle with delight. They have a great time,” Smith said.