Life

Model railroaders celebrate 25th anniversary at depot

By Natasha Townsend, Published: June 23, 2017

In 1991 a rally would change the course of history in Hendersonville by saving the Hendersonville Depot and bringing years of education about the railroad system for generations to come.
The Hendersonville Depot has a colorful history, including a time when it wasn’t the apple of Hendersonville’s eye.
“This depot was built in 1902,” said Apple Valley Model Railroad Club President Larry Morton. “The Southern Railway was the big railroad company in the south at that time. Passenger traffic started coming here in 1878. They had a very small depot here that did not serve the purpose, so after a few years they tore it down, and in 1902 they built this structure.”
The depot became the heart of Hendersonville’s retail shopping and hotel district.
“This was basically the center of town at that time,” Morton said. “Today we think of Main Street Hendersonville as being the hub, but this was the center of Hendersonville back then, and businesses grew up all around the depot. We got a lot of people come up here from the south to escape the heat. It was common in the summer for 500 kids to go through this depot on a weekend, either going to or coming from camps in the county. This was the start of the population boom in Hendersonville. In my opinion, the day the first passenger train arrived here is probably the single most important day in the history of Hendersonville and Henderson County because it opened up the county to the United States.”
Most of the population in the 19th century farmed, Morton said. Until the train came, they couldn’t ship produce beyond the immediate area. First came trains, then big produce shippers. Train traffic began to decline in the 1960s after President Eisenhower created the interstate highway system, easing travel by car, he said.
“In 1968 they closed the depot here,” Morton said. “The depot sat idle for many years and started falling into disrepair. The residents and businesses in the area started to complain to the city, saying that the depot was becoming an eyesore, tear it down or do something with it. They complained to the railroad company.”
The railroad company didn’t want to spend the money to tear the depot down, so it gave it to the city, he said. Now, the city owns the building, but the railroad company owns the ground that it’s standing on.
“Now the city owned it, but they didn’t know what to do with it,” Morton said. “So the residents continued to complain.” This sparked the rally to save the depot, and it worked.”
That’s where Morton and a small group of model railroad enthusiasts came in.
“The railroad club said, ‘If you will give us a room in the depot to put up a model railroad, we’ll help you to fix up the building, and we’ll be open to the public every Saturday to display our model railroad, and that’ll be a tourist attraction.’ That’s how the whole thing started,” he said.
That was in 1992.
This weekend, the Apple Valley Model Railroad Club is inviting the public to celebrate the 25th anniversary of its move to the depot and its role in keeping railroad history alive in Hendersonville.
“The original agreement for us to be here was that we would be open to the public once a week, so I think at that time they were just open on a Saturday morning,” Morton said. Now, the depot is open to the public Wednesday afternoons and all day on Saturday.
“We probably average somewhere between 6,000 and 8,000 people come through here each year,” he said. “More of the people who come through here are from out of town. They’re here visiting or passing through, and they’re looking for things to do.”
The club is one of the finest in the U.S., Morton said. It was featured in an article in the world’s largest model railroad magazine last year.
“A few years back I was in the Visitors Center, and I asked them where they rated our club in terms of visitor attractions in the county, and they said we’re number four,” Morton said. “This was five years ago, but I don’t think that’s changed.”

“We have three model railroads you can see,” Morton said. “Outside we have a garden railroad, which has large trains, and the layout has live plants in it and running water. It’s called garden railroading, it’s very popular. This is our newest project, we’re just now completing it. The rest of the building has a scale model railroad of Western North Carolina, and it’s in the most popular size of model railroads, which is called HO. The railroad that we have is called a freelance, where you design a railroad by giving it the flavor of the area you’re trying to represent.”
With so much to do at the depot, club members work on many projects.
“I like to get my hands into each of the projects we do,” Morton said. “The nice thing with a club like this is that we’ve got guys that specialize in each of the tasks that have to be done. That way, we get a high quality product.”
Over the past quarter century, the model railroad club has expanded from about 12 members to more than 100. Morton, president for eight years, started a junior membership program.
“We take young kids and membership is free, and they have the rights to come in here and ride trains like any other member,” he said. “We’re doing that to foster the hobby and keep it alive. Model railroading has a reputation to be an old man’s hobby. Kids today aren’t as into building things as they were in my day. The junior program has been very successful.”
Torsten Salak, 12, is one of the young train enthusiasts.
“What I like about this club is that they’re very friendly and very supportive,” he said. “They help me whenever I need anything, like if a train gets derailed or anything like that, and I’ve been to other places where they aren’t as helpful. They’re all really nice guys.”

Club members’ dues and visitor donations fund the club’s work.
“The public has been very, very good to us,” Morton said. “Because we have a high quality product to show, people appreciate it, and they’re generous. It’s allowed us to have a nice bank account to allow us to do just about anything we want to do. Each year we make more and more money, and get more and more people coming in. The city has been fantastic to us because they see how many people we bring into town.”

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The Apple Valley Model Railroad Club’s 25th anniversary celebration is 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Saturday, June 24. The model trains will be available to operate, there will be a custom car show, live entertainment, goats from the Carl Sandburg home and a barbecue truck that resembles a train.