ALL ABOARD; BACKYARD HOBBYISTS ON TRACK TO NEW ADVENTURE.

Byline: Carol Bidwell Staff Writer

Wooo-woooooo!

The whistle echoed off the hillsides as the old-time steam locomotive chug-chugged its way through the tunnel, spewing plumes of white smoke. Past a farm it slid, past a logging camp and through a forest before chugging its way into the station, where passengers laden with luggage waited to board.

The route through hills and valleys could have been in any mountain community at any time during the last century.

But it's all in miniature - in Bill Driggers' back yard in Van Nuys.

``We used to have all this'' - a wave of his arm encompassed three tunnels, and tiny people and animals - ``in the house,'' Driggers said. ``We had track running everywhere - under chairs, under tables. But when the (Northridge) earthquake hit, we lost a lot. The TV came down on an engine, and we lost thousands of dollars worth of equipment.

``So we decided to move it outside.''

With the help of fellow train enthusiast Marion Taber of Woodland Hills and his wife, Margaret, Driggers and his wife, Rosalie, built a 2-foot-high wooden box in the Driggers' back yard and filled it with 27 cubic yards of dirt. They used basketball-sized stones to build the highs and lows of the topography. To ward off the summer sun and the winter rains, they built a roof overhead.

The men laid several hundred feet of track and built mountains and tunnels while Rosalie Driggers planted tiny pine trees and other greenery and installed a drip irrigation system to water the plants.

Now the couple sits in their rocking chairs in the shade with a glass of iced tea while he - yard master, engineer and switchman, all in one - pushes buttons on a remote control to make the trains run, providing a hum of activity on an otherwise quiet Valley evening.

Bill Driggers is one of perhaps thousands of model railroad enthusiasts nationwide who have taken what was born as an indoor hobby out-of-doors.

``The difference between a traditional indoor layout and a garden railroad is the difference between realism and reality,'' said Rochelle Rucker, spokeswoman for the national Large Scale Model Railroad Association. ``Indoors ... mountains are made of plaster; rivers are made of plastic resin. Outdoors, mountains are made of dirt; rivers are made of water; rocks are real rocks.''

Garden railroads first became popular in Great Britain more than a century ago. The pastime achieved some popularity in the United States in the 1920s and '30s, but had all but died out before World War II. It enjoyed a resurgence in 1968, when the colorful Lehman Gross Bahn (LGB) trains were imported to the United States from Germany and began to catch the eye of grown-ups who had thrilled to the chug-chug of model trains when they were children.

Now, nearly a half-dozen manufacturers make miniature locomotives and dozens more pieces of apparatus at prices that quickly can empty a hobbyist's wallet. Locomotives cost $700 to $1,000, with cars - each about the size of a loaf of bread - selling for $100 to $300.

In the late 1980s and early '90s, many train fanciers with money to spend latched onto garden railroading, but most quickly grew bored, said Russ Reinberg of Westlake Village, who publishes Fine Scale Railroaders magazine.

``Everybody spent three weeks building like crazy,'' he said. ``Then they had a beer and watched their trains go around the track. Then they went on to something else.''

But for every yuppie who moved on, a new enthusiast is discovering the hobby, said Doug Blaine, spokesman for Bachmann Industries Inc. in Philadelphia, a firm founded in 1833 that makes trains in five different sizes.

``It's still an expanding hobby,'' he said. ``We're seeing a whole new generation of interest in trains. And gardening is a huge component of leisure time, and garden railroading combines the components of both trains and gardens.''

The hobby also has a loyal core of never-say-die garden railroaders who stick with their trains no matter what, tweaking the landscape, adding new buildings and animals, and buying new locomotives and cars.

``It's a hobby that's never done,'' said Taber, who started with one train and a bit of track. Now he runs four trains around nearly 500 feet of track in his back yard - a setting complete with a town with a theater, three stations, water tanks and an engine house.

``I put track zipping around the roses,'' he said. ``Then I detailed a sawmill and pond, a covered bridge ... It's quite a bit of work, but that's part of the hobby. If you get something you don't like, you tear it out or tear it down and make it over. You grab your tools and start whacking at it till you get it the way you want it.''

But Taber's layout, which train enthusiasts say is the most impressive in the Valley, has been shut down as he and his wife get ready to move to Arizona. He says he'll leave the track and the structures for whoever buys his house, along with one locomotive. The rest, he'll take to Arizona to start a new layout, this time a desert railroad.

``Somebody might want it in their back yard, but they won't want to build it,'' he said. ``They'll have it ready made. It'd be great for people with kids because garden railroading is a family thing. Everybody can get involved.''

But not everybody wants to get involved. Mary Ann Bang of Westlake Village said she leaves both the railroading and the gardening to her husband, Bill, who's built a desert landscape in their back yard for his trains to run through.

``A lot of the (railroaders') wives help by gardening or making the buildings, but I'm not interested in that,'' she said. ``But it's a good hobby for him. It keeps him home, and after so much traveling for work (he's a retired publisher's representative), it's a treat to have him around.''

Bill Bang, who estimates that he's spent $25,000 or more on his hobby, generally can be found adjusting the scenery, repairing an engine or car, or even using a sandpaper-covered block on the end of a broom handle to polish the electrically charged brass tracks so the locomotives' wheels make a better connection.

The stage set, he can operate as many as three or four trains at a time from a specially built console on his covered patio, pushing buttons and levers to guide the trains around a route that takes them through a city train yard; a town with a saloon, sheriff's office, hotel and Wells Fargo express office; and the wide-open spaces of manmade desert.

``I'm a train lover,'' Bang confesses. ``To me, they're magical things. I like to look at them. I like to ride on them. We've taken trains to New York, Boston, Washington. We've ridden the 20th Century Limited; we've ridden the Orient Express.''

Inside his home is a room filled with more trains - logging trains, circus trains, passenger trains. When he's in the mood, he'll put one on the track and take it for a ride, rain or shine.

His favorites are steam locomotives.

``All the moving parts are on the outside and you can see them,'' he said with childlike enthusiasm. ``They're wonderful machines. They're big and they're loud - all the kinds of things that boys like.''

Boys may like trains, but it was Rosalie Driggers who sparked her husband's interest in the hobby.

Never much of a hobbyist, he'd worked for years as an auto and airplane mechanic, a rocket tester at Rocketdyne, and later as an oil company worker. Then in 1981, he suffered a massive heart attack that required surgery, and faced a long, boring convalescence.

So, when her brother suggested trying to interest her husband in model trains, Rosalie Driggers bought a $55 cattle car equipped with a special sound system: Every time the doors were opened, the nonexistent ``cattle'' would moo, making it sound like a whole herd was inside.

Her husband was still in the intensive care unit at Tarzana Medical Center when Rosalie handed him the cattle car and showed him how it worked.

``I was thrilled,'' Bill Driggers said with a grin. ``I drove the nurses absolutely bonkers. Every time they walked into my room, I'd make the cows moo.''

Once he was released from the hospital, they bought a locomotive and a few cars, then more and more. Trains wound through the kitchen and the dining room, down the hall, into the bedrooms.

``You didn't dare walk in here at night,'' Bill Driggers said. ``But I loved it. It was the only thing that kept me alive.''

Strictly speaking, three open-heart surgeries - in 1981, 1983 and in June 1999 - have kept him alive, but his trains have kept the sparkle in his eye. Although he's still on a portable oxygen supply until his lungs recover from the most recent operation, he made sure the tube delivering his air supply is long enough so he can move around and tinker with his trains.

``It's a hobby you just never finish,'' he said, planning a new trestle and perhaps a stream of real water alongside one section of track. ``You just can't believe the fun we've had with this.''

For a free 14-page brochure from Garden Railways magazine offering advice on these questions and more for beginning outdoor railroaders, call [phone].

CAPTION(S):

5 Photos

Photo: (1--Cover--Color) Riding the (miniature) rails

(2--Color) Bill Driggers: ``We used to have all this in the house. But when the earthquake hit, we lost a lot. So we decided to move it outside.''

(3--Color) Driggers' back yard is filled with 27 cubic yards of dirt. He, his wife and friends used basketball-sized stones to build the highs and lows of the topography. To ward off the summer sun and the winter rains, they built a roof overhead.

Shaun Dyer/Special to the Daily News

(4--Color) In his Westlake Village back yard, Bill Bang built a desert landscape for his trains to run through. ``I'm a train lover,'' says Bang, who estimates that he's spent $25,000 or more on his hobby.

(5--Color) Bang adjusts one of his trains. He can operate as many as three or four trains at a time from a specially built console on his covered patio.

Michael Owen Baker/Staff Photographer