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ARGYLE - Tiny worlds within worlds live in Buck and Jan Guthrie's converted dairy barn off Highway 81 in Green County, just east of Argyle.

On one table, about waist high, a miniature drive-in has been re-created, with toy cars lined up in rows, little speakers and a tiny working TV serving as the movie screen. On another, a whole city is laid out, with a river running through it and a saw mill, an airplane hangar and a crane loading coal onto trucks. In one building downtown, through the windows on the second floor, you can see kids playing a game of floor hockey.

All around these scenes, on all the tables, circle the train cars - hundreds of them, on dozens of tracks, in different sizes and colors. With brand names such as American Flyer and Lionel, much of the Guthries' collection dates to the 1930s and 1940s, and includes vintage engines pulling box cars, flat cars and cabooses around and around the tracks.

"I'm not fascinated with just one type of train," said Buck Guthrie, 43, a former railroad engineer and lifelong enthusiast who said he has always dreamed of opening a toy train museum. "It's not work. It's like a vacation."

With his wife Jan and the couple's friend, Tom Moore, Buck Guthrie has spent much of the past two years transforming that dream into something tangible, and something to share. The couple now plays host to a few hundred visitors a year, with plans to expand the Toy Train Barn and add a small real train that people can ride perhaps one mile into the rolling valley outside.

"It's all about the romance of the railroad," Jan Guthrie said about the operation's appeal. "It's so cool. You can look back at the country's heritage and history. It's a symbol of us."

The train barn is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. every day, for a small admission fee. A guestbook in the train barn shows visitors from as far away as Tokyo and Brazil, as well as from Arizona, Colorado and Georgia. Tour groups from Chicago and Milwaukee who learn about the museum through flyers and word-of-mouth have visited, while passers-by of all ages - no doubt lured by the roadside sign and bright orange barn paint - drop in to take a look. The reaction is pretty similar. "Mostly we hear, 'Oh, wow!'" Buck Guthrie said. "Then they flip some of the switches. You can play."

Jan Guthrie helps build scenery for many of the displays using sawdust, coffee grounds, kitty litter or whatever else is on hand. The couple also uses old motors from videocassette recorders to power the layouts' working parts, plus a bewildering assortment of odds and ends they find lying around the house or garage.

For one unique piece, the building blocks included plastic pieces from a gumball machine, Christmas lights, a piece of chain from a player piano and a drinking straw to mimic a smokestack from which real smoke escapes. "There's so much stuff we make," Buck Guthrie said. "It's just a matter of imagination." And persistence.

Besides the heavy labor required to grade and lay tracks for the real railroad outside - which will be powered by a four-cylinder, Volkswagen Rabbit engine - Moore and the Guthries spend countless hours inside the train barn, tweaking and fixing the train sets and intricate displays to try to make them different or more interesting. "It's never done," Moore said. "There's always something you're going to add to it. That's part of the fun of it."
Text Copyright © 2003 The Wisconsin State Journal, Madison - All rights reserved.

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Chug-A Chug-A Choo choose to spend a day at the Toy Train Barn

Argyle-- In terms of favorite playthings for boys, toy trains rank right up there with dump trucks, tractors and Army guys. And since little boys have a tendency to grow into bigger boys with bigger toys, it makes sense that Buck Guthrie would turn his lifelong love of trains into the Toy Train Barn.

Located about nine miles northwest of Monroe, Wis., the Toy Train Barn is a work in progress and a labor of love for Buck, his wife Jan and the rest of their family and friends. "Most people get a train set when they are about seven and after a few years it gets put away and forgotten," said Tom Moore of Argyle, Wis, who has been helping Buck with building the Toy Train Barn. "That's the way I am, but Buck is different.

He never quit playing with trains. He's always wanted to do something like this." The Toy Train Barn is just that -- a barn. It is painted the same orange color as the famous Milwaukee Road trains and filled with intricately detailed model train displays. Each display has hundreds of elements that make for a fun game of "I Spy" for visitors. With train set-ups of nearly every size imaginable, you can spend hours looking for all manner of things in these miniature worlds. There is a drive-in movie theatre, that actually shows movies. There are hockey players skating around on the ice. There is even a miniature model train running inside a miniature model train stores near the model train tracks.

Most of the animated features have controls that are accessible to the visitors, so they can join in the fun of playing with the trains. Buck and Moore say they find many of the visitors want to know how the displays are made. "I stopped building this mountain and just left the foam exposed because people were always asking me how I made the mountains so real," Buck said. Moore explained that many of the smaller moving pieces are animated with motors from old record players and VCRs. They even have one train that runs for a specific amount of time and is controlled by some parts salvaged from an old microwave oven.

This miniature tinkering that makes the models come alive inside the barn has also been extended to a project outside of the barn. Buck is in the process of building a train that will run on over a mile of tracks laid out around the property. This train will be big enough for people to ride in, and it is planned to travel over a rocky ravine on a bridge approximately 15 feet in the air. Buck calls this the Green County Gulch Railroad and he says the path of the train follows a path he once drove on a tractor when he was a young boy.

The Barn is next to the house where Buck grew up, and years ago, he would drive the tractor and dream of having his own train to drive over the gulch. The family farm left the family after Buck grew up, but a few years ago, he was able to buy it back. "I originally bought this land because I wanted to set up a train to run outdors," Buck said. "But when I got here I realized the barn was close to falling down. I hated to see the barn fall down, so I was forced to work on fixing it and strengthening the structure." With a sound barn and no animals to put in it, Buck hit on the idea of storing his model trains inside the old milking parlor.

And the rest is history. Of course, since this is a work in progress, it is history in the making -- and well worth the drive to see this developing model train attraction.

Information

WHAT: Toy Train Barn
ADMISSION: $5 for adults and $2.50 for children ages 4 to 10.
WHERE: The Barn is located 10 miles north and west of Monroe on the south side of WI 81.
CONTACT: For more information, check out the Web at www.whrc wi.org/trainbarn or call (608) 966-1464.
Copyright © The Journal-Standard All rights reserved.

The Toy Train Barn is open all year round, so come on out and see the ever changing lay outs and displays!