All aboard: Riding the rails in miniature at Chadwick model railroad club

CHADWICK – Chadwick may be the youngest community in Carroll County, but it’s not the smallest.

That distinction goes to the places depicted in scenic slices of small-town life at a clubhouse in the heart of the village – and when we say small-town life, we mean small. Whole communities can be found inside the four walls of a downtown building.

The tiny towns found inside 101 Main St. are the handiwork of the Northwest Illinois Model Railroad Club, and a lot of work has gone into making these Main Street models look like the real thing.

Outside, horns from Burlington Northern and Santa Fe Railway engines blare up to 30 times a day through the village of about 550, while inside, the Rock River Railroad whizzes through the nooks and crannies all over two stories of the downtown club building.

The Rock River Railroad is a fictitious one, but its surrounding landscape is dotted with tiny version of real-life local scenery and stations along its route from Rockford to Chillicothe. Years of hard work has helped build diminutive depictions of these sights and sounds – it’s been a continual work in progress since the club formed in 2003 with several model railroad enthusiasts in the region.

Duane Imel of Chadwick, a founding trustee, has enjoyed the club’s growth and popularity.

“We had electricians, we had building builders, we had scenery builders, and with the collective talent of all of the members, we could do this,” Imel said. “Collectively, we can build something that no one person could do on their own before.”

Having a wide-open imagination is what keeps the club’s pair of layouts a work of art in progress. John Urbaniak of Sterling is the club’s creative chief – any alterations or ideas go through him and a few other members who determine creative control.

Spending time at the club and wielding a remote control to operate the trains has been a happy hobby for the retired Urbaniak.

“It keeps me busy,” he said. “I enjoy doing it and like to experiment doing different things with it sometimes. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t.”

The HO-model layout on the main floor measures about 20 by 40 feet, and the downstairs setup is much larger at 30 by 60 feet, with multiple loops. Tracks are designed to bend and be flexible to best depict real-life layouts; for many years, tracks only came in straight pieces, with an occasional curve, which didn’t lend itself to much creativity, Imel said.

The Rock River line weaves its way around the display on the bottom level and stops at stations along the line; Chadwick being one of them, and Deer Grove – a small village in Whiteside County – another.

Numerous buildings and depictions of life around these tiny towns can be found throughout the layout: a large steel truss bridge similar to the one on the Canadian Pacific over the Mississippi River in Savanna crosses over a river, another Savanna scene depicting the former Viaduct Road arches is just down the line, and, elsewhere, a replica of a couple of buildings at the former Northwestern Steel and Wire factory in Sterling is lit up against a partial night sky.

One area of the track setup downstairs can go dark with a flip of a switch, while the engine lights up for nighttime travel.

Roleplay cards are attached to each station, and operators can experience a typical day’s work along the line.

“A lot of people just come to watch the trains run around,” Imel said. “We have stools for the kids, and they’ll sit on them and watch the trains to by, and then pick up their stool and head to where the train goes and get back up on it again.”

Each member has their own chest of engines, cars and other accessories that they can put on the tracks when they visit.

Imel’s compartment has his favorite steam engines, which were the way of the railroad for more than a century before diesel locomotives took over.

“All of the moving parts, just watching them is fun,” he said. “The idea that they would run two or three of these was all done by listening to the other trains, before radio and things like that.”

Also included in his collection is a car that pays homage to one of his former workplaces, Terra International, in Milledgeville.

Numerous lines, past and present, make appearances throughout the club’s tracks; and cars have several paint schemes, representing real-life trains that have come and gone over the years. There are a couple of cars with “Rock Island blue” – a brief color scheme detour made by the familiar red and gold Rock Island line during the 1970s. Other color combos found along the tracks include Burlington Northern green, Chicago and North Western yellow, and the orange-striped Chessie System scheme from the former B&O Railroad.

The club meets every Thursday from 6 to 8 p.m.; the first week is a general club meeting, and the following weeks are work days, and days where the public can come to watch the trains in action. The club also has open houses twice a year and during special community events in Chadwick. The COVID-19 pandemic, however, has derailed the club’s events for nearly a year.

New members in good standing for more than 6 months have a key to the building and can improve upon the existing layouts with their own creative ideas, but first they must be approved by other members.

Donations always are accepted to help keep the trains running and the scenery maintained and updated.

Club members are hopeful that their next open house, scheduled for March, will finally be a chance to have the public see what they’ve been working on for the past year. These days, manual switches have given way to handheld technology to keep both track layouts buzzing.

“There are new products that come out all of the time, and the technology is amazing now,” Urbaniak said. “It’s got all of the buttons and whistles, and you can even operate them from your phone. When I was a kid, you were lucky to run one locomotive at a time; now you can run two or three locomotives on the same track.”

Meanwhile, the speaker at the grand central station upstairs broadcasts its final announcement for the night:

“Last call for Amtrak train No. 40, the Broadway Limited: Philadelphia, Harrisburg, Pittsburgh, Akron, Cleveland, Toledo, South Bend, Chicago. Last call. Track 44.”

To get on board

The Northwestern Illinois Model Railroad Club headquarters is at 101 Main St. in Chadwick. Find it on Facebook, or email nwilmrr@gmail.com to request to join or for more information.

Find “northwest Illinois model railroad club” on YouTube to watch videos of the trains in action.