Hidden Talents:
Psychology Department Instructor Bill Kaiser's Backyard Railroad

<<< In training--Psychology department instructor and lab director Bill Kaiser really gets into his longtime hobby, building model trains in his Northampton backyard. He constructed the miniature railroad bridge shown here last summer.

Ask Bill Kaiser what model train enthusiasts get out of the thousands of hours they devote to this all-consuming interest, and he'll tell you, "Some like to run trains round and round, some like to make up schemes and schedules, and some like to build them."

Looking at his 300 feet of track, plus sidings; the eight tons of rock he hauled to build the two-and-a-half-foot high, two-foot wide authentic dry stone wall that supports the railroad bed; the sixteen-foot wooden trestle bridge modeled after Northampton's bike path bridge over the Connecticut River; and his hand-made battery-powered locomotive; it's abundantly clear that Kaiser is the building type. Set into the wooded hill behind Kaiser's Northampton home, his model-train layout is both a fanciful delight and a workmanlike exercise in technical problem solving.

Kaiser, lab director and instructor in the psychology department for the past twenty years, is a master of many different disciplines, and in working with model trains he says he's found "a wonderful hobby because it brings in all sorts of subinterests." These include creating everything from track and switches to radio-controlled locomotives and the miniature steam boiler he uses to power them. His workshop is an appealing clutter of precomputer machine tools, metal shavings, oil cans, and hand tools. There, he designs and builds the many parts that make up his Gauge 1 layout.

"Gauge 1 trains, which are slightly larger than the O gauge with which most people are familiar, is a growing part of the hobby," says Kaiser. These serious-looking trains chug impressively around the original circle Kaiser built in 1989. He added the upper loop, with its new bridges, in 1996. Although the track and switches stay outside all year, Kaiser says "it's all fairly stable and just needs some spring tuning to get out the humps and dips." Now that Kaiser has managed to overcome the hillside's tree roots, rocks, frost heaves, and drainage issues, he's starting to think about buildings and landscaping.

Never one to waste materials, Kaiser has fashioned log seats out of a huge tree that crashed down on his track during last April's fierce storm, fortunately causing almost no damage. To sit on a log section and contemplate his backyard train kingdom is to feel transported to a precise and pleasing miniature universe.