Station model on track for Ennis show

IT is a case of full steam ahead for a semi-retired Kinvara-based master chef, who has created a life-like version of the old Gort Railway Station.

IT is a case of full steam ahead for a semi-retired Kinvara-based master chef, who has created a life-like version of the old Gort Railway Station.
A real treat is in store for railway enthusiasts, who will surely derive great enjoyment from examining the intricate details crafted by Walter Oberle’s painstaking patience at the second Clare Diecast and Model Show in the West County Hotel, Ennis on Sunday, April 15. Proceeds from the show will go to Clare Crusaders.
Show organiser, Brian Kavanagh has described his work as “phenomenal”.
Walter moved from Germany to live in Kinvara in 1994, after marrying an Irish woman. His love affair with railway models started at the age of six, when his father gave him the first train set.
“This is artistic work. Once you start you don’t stop. I find this hobby very relaxing because it clears your mind. I get great satisfaction from solving a problem.
“I still have my trains from 1959, which are running perfectly. You put them on the track and they run. It is not like the new ones. I prefer the German models, which are more detailed and hold their value if you have to sell them.
“You need patience. You can’t do a model railway like you serve a meal. If you having difficulty, you give it up and come back and solve the problem the next day,” he said.
“You don’t need an engineering background and can learn how to do this yourself with the help of instructions and books. I learned it all by myself. Some people can do it; some people can’t do it. If you want to do what I am doing, it takes a bit of know-how. You learn something new every day. You have to be creative because it can be very expensive to complete,” Walter added.
The Gort Railway Station has already been exhibited at a show in Mountbellew, County Galway and Kinvara during the Crinniu the mBád festival last year. It will also be shown for the third time at a show in Wexford, which is regarded as the ‘Olympics for trains modellers’, before the Ennis show.
In all his shows he has found girls were fascinated and wanted to trade in their Barbies for the moveable car system, which has lights to stop and start.
Apart from a few additions, such as the water tower, the 58-year-old has now created a very impressive model of the old Gort Railway Station from 1890 up to around 2000, when the old station was knocked down.
When the 10 modules are joined together, the station extends to nine metres by three in length. The track layout is exactly as it was, while he makes his castings from plaster of paris.
Walter has built Burke’s store and a miniature electric car comes up to the station and turns around Burke’s Store. A tractor moves in the farm section, which has a hayshed where hay is unloaded for sheep and cows.
He got original plans of the old Gort railway in Dublin and friends sent him photographs of how it looked. In total, he has examined over 500 photographs of how it looks today to incorporate some new features.
Walter completed his own casting for the road and wall and got moss from the gardens around his house. Only the tree is fake. Very intricate eye-catching details, such as the lights, electricity telegraph poles and electricity transformer, are all created with great imagination.
In the ‘70 and ‘80s, Gort was famous for its cattle trade. This is reflected in Walter’s miniature farm, with a worker operating a scythe, a farmer’s wife with a pitchfork, a man with a kango hammer and a moveable water crane for filling up the steam engine a little lake nearby.
Locals can recognise the footpath down from Burke’s Shop going up to the railway station from the model.
“People in Mountbellew told me they could recognise the short cut they had taken down near the station. A man in his 80s said, ‘I walked up there and I can recall it’,” Walter stated.
Signals operate from the signal box to direct the old railway coaches with a first-class carriage, a second-class carriage and a restaurant carriage. The station also includes moveable cars, trains and people.
Walter has provided three modules with electric cars that run on batteries and magnets, which will be available for viewing during the show.
He was the first model enthusiast in Ireland to incorporate these cars in his layout. Now a few people from the Model Club in Dublin have created something similar.
Although the model is largely completed, he explained a model railway is never finished because enthusiasts are always looking to see how they can add new gadgets.
Walter’s long-term plans include building a replica of the new Gort Railway Station and the old Ennis Railway Station.