Railroad club brings Florida history to life

RAINA BARNETT/Alachua County Today

Members of the North Central Florida Railroad Club spend countless hours preparing railroad dioramas, attending to the smallest of details to ensure authenticity.

ALACHUA – The rich local history of farming and travel by trains is on display at the Welcome Center on Main Street in Alachua.

The most recent project of The North Central Florida Model Railroad Club depicts the 1930s to 1940s time period in Florida, complete with train tracks, miniature farms, old houses and family-owned businesses.

Dot Evans, an associate of the Alachua County Chamber of Commerce, said she enjoys the display.

“The detail that goes into it is amazing, like the little oranges,” Evans said.

Jim Yakubsin, a member of the club, said these projects can take up to a year.

“There’s a lot of different things we try to put in there,” Yakubsin said. “We’ve got about 27 guys now. They’ve all got their interests and their own techniques, and we all love model railroading.”

The club is busy preparing other, more specific projects for the future, namely a diorama of the city of Alachua itself.

“I did a lot of research in downtown Alachua, talked to a lot of people who lived here since they were kids,” Yakubsin said.

Trains have been an integral part of Alachua’s history.

“Parents used to put their kids on the train for a day and they would just head out to the ocean and come back,” Yakubsin said.

Vada Horner, an Alachua County school teacher, has lived in Alachua for decades, and remembers how influential trains once were.

“Ms. Horner has taught for years,” Yakubsin said. “She’s taught all my children, and was interested in bringing some kids up here like a field trip so we could talk about the trains and the history.”

The railroad club is more than a way to educate the public; it can bring back memories for older generations.

“I’ve been here since 1971; I was a policeman, I was a fireman, I did a lot of things with the city, I’ve been very involved,” Yakubsin said. “When I retired from the sheriff’s office and the military, I had some spare time so I got together with a couple guys and said, ‘Let’s go see what we can do,’ so we started this.”

Pictures from the past help the club reconstruct much of the local businesses and architecture.

The club primarily recruits new members through a hobby shop in Gainesville, HobbyTown.

“We put up flyers there, and believe it or not, there’s a lot of people out there who like this stuff but never know about it,” Yakubsin said.

The club tries to bring together the community through public events like expos.

“About three months ago we did our first expo down on Archer Road down by Shriners, and we had about 200 to 300 people come out,” Yakubsin said. “We had only about 15 vendors. All of these conventions are in Orlando or Jacksonville, so when you get it going in a small community it’s really great.”

Ultimately, the club hopes to get the community interested in the local history of both the City and County of Alachua.

“We want to have open houses,” Yakubsin said. “Our main goal is to have people come here, so we can educate them on the history of the railroad. We can do a lot of different things for the kids.”

The club regularly meets every Thursday morning at the Tower Road Branch Library in Gainesville.

For more detailed information, Yakubsin encourages inquiries be made either through the website, ncfrailroadclub.weebly.com, or by phone, 352-222-8837.

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