Meet ‘Electra’s Engineers,’ Who Keep the Shelburne Museum’s Toy Trains on Track

Morning light streamed through the antique windows of the Shelburne Museum toy shop, casting an almost sepia glow on the trainmen who arrived at 9 a.m. for their weekly maintenance visit. The five men had plenty of work to do on the decades-old model train set before the museum opened at 10. Many of the visitors that day would be children eager to push the exhibit’s buttons, expecting the train to move, the whistle to sound, and the plastic Holstein cow to walk on and off the tracks.

Every Monday morning, these volunteers, all retirees in their seventies, assemble at the small outbuilding on the northern edge of the museum grounds to work on the railroad. For them, tinkering with model trains is a labor of love that took hold when they were kids and survived well into adulthood. Of the scores of volunteers who donate their time in the museum’s art collection, gardens and development office, this group has a name and identity all its own: Electra’s engineers.

The Shelburne Museum’s 6-by-8-foot train layout, with its mountain tunnels, trestle bridge, train station, water tower and railroad crossing, is small by the standards of serious model train enthusiasts. That includes most of these guys, who have more elaborate sets in their own homes.

“Half my basement is full of Lionel trains,” said Sherward Farnsworth, 75, a retired civil engineer who used to work for the Vermont Agency of Transportation. Speaking on behalf of himself and his fellow volunteers, he added, “There’s always a spouse who comes in who says, ‘That’s as big as it’s gonna get. No bigger!'”

Despite this layout’s modest size, its trains get more wear and tear than most. Larry Maier, a retired rocket scientist with the group, calculated that the museum’s model train traveled more than 75 miles last year in its numerous loops around the track. And, as anyone who’s owned model trains can attest, it takes technical know-how and vigilant attention to detail to keep the cars on the tracks and all the accessories operational, especially when no one is around all day to fiddle with them.

“It’s not running right, and I’m not sure if it’s the engine or the circuit,” volunteer Ed Bianchi said, crouching down to examine the tracks at eye level. “Let’s try a different engine.”

Fortunately, fellow volunteer Chris Monje had brought along a spare from his own collection: a green-and-yellow locomotive modeled after the Rutland Railroad’s mid-20th-century diesel engines. Bianchi positioned the engine on the rails, and the train instantly sprung to life.

Monje, 70, has a fondness for these particular trains. Like the ones in his basement in Ferrisburgh, it’s an S-gauge set manufactured by American Flyer. A smaller gauge, or track width, than the far more popular O-gauge Lionel trains, which are 1/48th actual size, the S-gauge American Flyers are 1/64th actual size and have two rails compared to Lionel’s traditional three. Monje, who grew up in New York City in the 1950s, remembers seeing model trains just like these in the department store windows of Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s every winter holiday season.

The Shelburne Museum’s American Flyer display wasn’t an arbitrary acquisition. Museum founder Electra Havemeyer Webb (1888-1960) was a good friend and hunting partner of Alfred Carlton “A.C.” Gilbert (1884-1961), inventor of the Erector Set and owner of American Flyer from 1938 until his death.

In 1954, Webb, whose husband, James Watson Webb, was a great-grandson of railroad and shipping magnate Cornelius Vanderbilt, asked Gilbert to build the museum a model train exhibit. Gilbert’s original 8-by-20-foot layout stood just 2.5 feet off the ground, which allowed children to view it at eye level and operate it themselves.

According to Bianchi, when the layout first arrived from the American Flyer factory in New Haven, Conn., Webb was irate because it was completely flat and thus didn’t resemble Vermont’s mountainous landscape. In an effort to make it look more realistic, the museum staff painted a mural behind it. That mural is believed to have been painted on the walls of a room adjacent to the current one, which now houses the dining room set and wallpaper from the Webbs’ Long Island summer home.

“We suspect that behind that wallpaper is that original mural,” Bianchi said. “But we can’t prove it because no one will let us remove it.”

After Webb’s death in 1960, the 1950s-era train set, deemed anachronistic in an exhibit devoted to 19th-century toys, was dismantled and donated to the now-defunct Brandon Training School. It was housed there until 1978, when it was finally dismantled and sold at auction to Frederick “Fritz” Raab, a local electrical engineer and radio researcher.

In 2003, Bianchi, who was also a teacher at Charlotte Central School, was helping a student with a project about the steamship Ticonderoga when he came across an old photograph of the Shelburne Museum’s model railroad. The 71-year-old Bianchi, a train enthusiast since childhood — he still has his father’s set from 1924 — had no idea that the museum had ever housed model trains.

So, in 2004, Bianchi and eight other model train enthusiasts, including Raab and fellow volunteer Nick Hardin, approached the museum with a plan to rebuild a smaller version of Webb’s original layout. The museum accepted their proposal and funded it with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

The volunteers began constructing the new layout on a ping-pong table in Hardin’s basement. Containing locomotives, rolling stock and accessories from the original layout, as well as newer S-gauge re-creations, the exhibit opened to the public in 2005 on the 50th anniversary of the original one.

How closely the current layout resembles the 1950s version is uncertain because no photos of the original layout, aside from those in the museum, are known to exist.

“I’ve looked for years,” Bianchi said with dismay. He said he always asks model train buffs who are old enough to have seen the original one if they have any pictures of it. Thus far, he’s found none.

However, if any still exist, they could turn up later this month when the New England Division of the Train Collectors Association hosts its 69th annual national convention in Burlington. The weeklong event, whose exhibits and vendor displays open to the public on June 30 and July 1, will include a tour of the Shelburne Museum.

Fittingly, the logo for this year’s TCA convention features a green-and-yellow Rutland Railroad locomotive, like the one Monje provided, as well as the steamship Ticonderoga, a centerpiece of the museum grounds and one of its most popular exhibits. (See sidebar.)

Why feature a steamship in the logo of a model train convention? In winter 1955, the decommissioned vessel was hauled overland from the lake on parallel sets of railroad tracks, which had to be moved forward in sections as the ship inched its way to the museum grounds. Said Bianchi, “It was like moving the blocks for the pyramids.”

Just as the Ticonderoga crossed the Rutland Railroad tracks, an approaching freight train had to stop and allow the steamship to pass before it could continue on. It was a rare instance when a freight train had to wait for another vehicle to move out of its way.

Today, of the more than 100 volunteers who donate their time and expertise to the Shelburne Museum, Electra’s engineers continue to perform a unique and vital function, museum director Thomas Denenberg said. Typically, kids see the model trains at the end of their museum visit, after hours of just looking at historic objects and being told what is important. Unlike much of the museum’s exhibits, the model trains are interactive.

“I’ve been in the toy shop hundreds of times,” Denenberg said. “When you watch the joy of a child pushing the buttons and starting the trains, it’s kind of a profound moment.”

Once Electra’s engineers wrapped up their weekly maintenance visit, the railroad tracks and wheels had been cleaned, the locomotive ran smoothly, the lights on the crossing gate lit up, and the sound effects for the train station had been rerecorded. As volunteer Roger Brassard, 78, explained, the original 1950s station contained a miniature record player inside, complete with a small ceramic disc for playing a prerecorded announcement that said, “All aboard! American Flyer, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and all points west!”

When Bianchi pushed the exhibit button to play the announcement — he’d found a recording of the original audio on YouTube — the rest of the volunteers looked on approvingly and smiled.

The Art of Crafts

Jerry DeGraff served four years in the U.S. Navy in the late 1960s and early ’70s stationed in Scotland and Guam, then lived out much of his life in a house on Hinesburg’s Lake Iroquois. But it wasn’t until December 1994 — when DeGraff’s wife, Davey, gave him a how-to book for Christmas — that he became serious about boats.

Model boats, that is.

A native of Essex Junction, DeGraff worked for many years in the building trades, constructing houses, doing carpentry, and installing tile floors, cabinetry and other finish work. In his free time, he used the book his wife gave him to teach himself how to build model boats from scratch.

He derived years of pleasure from it — until September 2022 when DeGraff died of lung cancer at age 72. Though few people other than family and close friends ever had an opportunity to see DeGraff’s creations while he was alive, an upcoming exhibit, created by his wife and stepdaughter, will soon share his work with a wider audience.

Even DeGraff’s first effort at model boatbuilding, a simple rowboat, reveals the artistry and meticulous attention to detail that would become his trademark. Soon, DeGraff was trying his hand at much more sophisticated vessels: tugboats, steamboats, Boston whalers, lobster boats, Mansfield canoes. Of the more than 40 model boats he built from scratch, virtually all were crafted without plans or designs. He carved, assembled and painted them all by hand, sometimes making them look weathered by the sea. Each took him weeks, if not months, to finish.

“It was time-consuming, but he loved every minute of doing it,” Davey said.

Once, after seeing the Lois McClure docked in Burlington, DeGraff took photos of the 19th-century canal schooner and used them to build a model of it, which he later donated to Vergennes’ Lake Champlain Maritime Museum.

Among DeGraff’s most impressive creations is a scale model of the Ticonderoga, which he carved using blueprints of the 1906 steamship that he acquired from the Shelburne Museum. The model, which is about three feet long, includes the dolly and parallel set of railroad tracks that were used in 1955 to move the steamship from Lake Champlain to its current location at the Shelburne Museum. DeGraff re-created the 220-foot vessel with such accuracy that for a short time the museum had it on display. It was one of the only times that DeGraff’s model boats were on public view.

That will soon change. On June 24 and 25, Bread & Butter Farm in Shelburne will host a free, pop-up exhibition of DeGraff’s scratch-built model boats.

“Our fantasy is that somebody will want to put it up somewhere else and have his collection there permanently,” said Tessa Holmes, DeGraff’s stepdaughter. “I don’t think anybody knew this collection was here. But it’s incredible and should be seen.”

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This article appears in Jun 14-20, 2023.

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