John Snell, 58, serves as the Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad Association train’s engineer in this July 10 photo in Abilene. Abilene has a day trip through Dickinson County featuring these old-fashioned locomotives.

Abilene ? Sporting bib overalls and an engineer’s cap, conductor Jerry Shell says he feels like a kid again.

“All aboard,” he shouted like a giddy schoolboy as customers traipsed onto Abilene’s passenger train.

Shell, 60, of Inman, is one of those nostalgia buffs who goes nuts over trains. He still has the first Lionel he received from Santa at age 4. Moreover, he has model trains at his home.

So in a dream of sorts, he rides the railways one day a week, wearing the pinstriped hat as a volunteer conductor for the Abilene & Smoky Valley Railroad Association.

“I always had a passion for trains,” Shell said, adding it allows him to act like a 4-year-old again, although “my body tells me I’m not.”

His hope is that his romance of the rail funnels through those who ride this antique vessel on a day trip through Dickinson County. It’s an effort to get people to park their cars, buy a ticket at the restored 1887 Rock Island Depot and admire the scenery the old-fashioned way.

Abilene has come a long way since Marshall “Wild Bill” Hickock carried a six-shooter. The former Chisholm Trail cow town offers sightseers tours of mansions, Ike’s presidential museum, the Greyhound Hall of Fame, as well as a place to eat a chicken-fried dinner — the Brookville Hotel off Interstate 70.

Add to the list this locomotive excursion that, for the past 15 years, has chugged from Abilene to Enterprise and back again on 18 miles of Rock Island rail line first laid in 1886. When the Union Pacific abandoned the line in 1989, local residents got into action, working to bring a small tourist train to town, said Mary Jane Oard, the association’s manager.

They found a 1945 Hutchinson Northern diesel engine. A tourist railroad in Belton, Mo., donated a rotting passenger car. They received a 100-year-old KATY railroad car, and an old gondola car was found in Council Grove and given to the association.

The yellow caboose was a gift from the Riley County Historical Society. Earlier this year, the association added a steam engine to the mix.

This summer, the train has proven popular, Oard said.

It could be a fact that people are looking for more backyard adventures. Or she said, maybe people are just realizing such a trip is available.

McPherson resident and one of the train’s engineers, John Snell, has volunteered for the railroad association for 15 years. He had model trains set up in the basement of the McPherson music store he owned for 30 years, Belli Bros.

He closed the shop three years ago, but continues an instrument repair business from his home in between volunteering in Abilene, where he, like Shell, wears an engineer’s cap once a week.

“Working with the people, meeting the people,” Snell said as he prepared to pull the 10 a.m. train toward Enterprise. “That’s what is fun.”