Last days for elaborate train set

ALTON, Ill. — For nearly 50 years, Alton resident Joe J. Kelly Jr. has enjoyed his elaborate, five-track train set highlighted with Alton memorabilia, handmade buildings and countless features he lovingly collected.

That tri-level train set, though — with a Lionel, American Flyer, Illinois Central, Alton Limited and other models — sadly is close to reaching its final stop. Soon there will be no more “choo choos,” sharp whistles or multitude of lights in Kelly’s so-called Depot.

Soon, Kelly, 83, and his son Matt will dismantle the roughly 10- by 15-foot assemblage he began putting together in 1962 after moving from the home he grew up in on Bluff Street. Those river bluffs inspired him to create the hilly “trainscape.”

“It has to come down, and he can see how it gets divided up,” Matt Kelly said.

Removal of the shining star in his train-themed basement is to prepare for Kelly’s planned move to Marian Heights apartments by Riverfront Park — once his State Street house sells.

Both father and son admit that deconstruction of the key part of the Depot will be sad.

“It’s going to make me cry,” Matt Kelly admitted. He said he will keep some of the components, such as the original train his father received as a Christmas gift in 1930 or 1931, and pieces locked in a glass-front cabinet. “The big ones will stay in the family,” he said of the American Flyer.

That oldest train, with its larger engine and cars and wider tracks, is Joe Kelly’s favorite. It evokes memories that go back 80 years.

“Our mother would let us keep it out on a 4- by 8-foot piece of plywood until Valentine’s Day,” he said with a smile, recalling his brother Jack. “Then we had to put it up until the next Christmas.”

The Kelly boys kept getting train-related gifts each Christmas, which got Joe off to a good start when he assembled the tabletop town 49 years ago. Once grown, he began purchasing the components in Alton and at Famous-Barr in downtown St. Louis.

The expansive landscape, that tops sturdy tables, also has memories for Kelly. His late artistic wife, Rita, and her sister Marcella Eggemann ran up and down the stairs to and from the kitchen mixing plaster of Paris. The women then applied the goo to wire framing, later painting the hills, plateaus and waterways.

That hardened landscape will have to be cut up during the dismantling, but Matt Kelly plans to videotape his father running the trains before the demolition for posterity.

Father and son plan to work with a private party to sell most of the hundreds of pieces Joe Kelly so carefully laid out — and hooked up electrically — to the delight of his sons and visitors to his little pretend village.

When the boys wanted to make mischief, they would move about the animals or trees that their father had placed precisely in preferred spots. Joe Kelly said he rigged the lighting to go on throughout the basement so he always would know if one of his sons slipped downstairs to play with the trains.

Without looking, Kelly worked the switches Wednesday making the chugging locomotives round corners, and blast notice to the invisible villagers inside their lighted homes that the trains are coming. When he turns off a white, overhead bulb, the red light bulb next to it softly glows to highlight the tiny, individual lights throughout “Kellyville.”

People can view the scene through two large windows inside the basement, which gives the experience of looking at a mini-world, with a Christmas accent.

“He likes trains and Christmas,” Matt Kelly said.

When the original landscape filled, Kelly added an upper, bluff level to the west end, and also expanded the south side to hold his menagerie.

On demolition day, the men will salvage the Plasticville gas station, motel and other buildings in the classic toy line; the wooden firehouse Joe’s father made; a building his other son Mark made; numerous trees — some lighted, snow-tipped Christmas firs; streetlights, advertising billboards, cowboys, Indians, horses and livestock; a metal “log cabin,” bridges and even a small Piasa Bird cutout.

Oddly, although Kelly operated the former Acme 32 Bowl on East Broadway, his little town has no bowling alley and no sign of bowling pin cargo in the trains. The cars contain realistic loads, from a searchlight and a roll of wire, to piles of lumber, coal and even several tiny tractors. Along their well-traveled routes, the trains pass an oil rig, handmade oil tank that used to be a coffee can, farmland and even a Salvation Army band playing by a gazebo.

At the bottom of the basement stairs, an old ticket counter and antique wall telephone that works marks the entryway to the Depot.

Although long retired, Kelly still serves on the Alton Civil Service Commission. He said he looks forward to moving because he still knows many people who bowled at Acme years ago who live at Marian Heights.