Kaleb Larson, 3, stares down a locomotive heading down the railroad track Saturday at the Douglas County 4-H Fairgrounds. The Lawrence Model Railroad Club conducted its Seventh Model Railroad Show and Swap Meet in front of a steady stream of onlookers. A portion of the admission fee collected from the event will go to the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen, or LINK, to help replenish its food pantry.

The love for trains seems to start young, and it was clear at Saturday’s Lawrence Model Railroad Train Show and Swap Meet that the fascination only grows with age.

“I remember when I was in second grade and you have to go to bed early for Santa Claus to come, and you get up and see your grandfather, dad and uncle playing with the train set, blowing the whistle, and they want to know why you wake up,” said Steve Meseraull, president of the Lawrence Model Railroad Club.

Receiving the first train is often when the allure begins, said Jim Taylor, the show coordinator and member of the Lawrence Model Railroad Club. For many at the show, it also led to numerous hours spent poring over the finest details of model trains and their scale layouts.

Area railroad clubs showed off their labor of love at the Douglas County 4-H Fairgrounds to more than 300 train enthusiasts and curious children. For the second year, the Lawrence Model Railroad Club, sponsored by Checkers Food Store and the Lawrence Journal-World, collected boxes of canned goods for the Lawrence Interdenominational Nutrition Kitchen food pantry.

Train layouts of various sizes were on display. The layouts were made up of several individual modules designed by club members. The HO-scale layout is in the middle range of model scales, the smallest is the N-scale, and, for the first year, the larger G-scale was presented. Details included people fishing at mountain scenes, cement plants with chimney smoke coming out and people eating at restaurants.

Ask Meseraull why he spends so much time on the trains, and he’ll reply, “it’s the enthusiasm of the children.”

One child in particular, Matthew Jacobsen, 10, was enticed by Meseraull’s trains a few years ago.

“I went over to my next-door neighbor, Uncle Steve, well that’s what I call him; his real name is Steve Meseraull,” Jacobsen said. “He has a pretty big layout and I used to love to play with that, and then one day I got up the guts to go ask him if he could help me build a layout.”

Ever since, Jacobsen, the youngest member of the Lawrence Railroad Club, began working on his favorite layout, the HO-scale.

“Building the HO-scale takes the most time,” he said. “You have to get really detailed with it, but it’s a lot of fun, it is.”