MODEL TRAIN LOVER COMPLETES SET WITH RAILROAD IN FILLMORE.

Byline: Christopher Noxon Daily News Staff Writer

Dave Wilkinson got his hands on his first train set when he was 8 years old. He arranged miniature mountains and tiny towns on his bedroom floor and bought new tracks and cars with money earned mowing lawns and baling hay.

Forty years later, Wilkinson is about to acquire another train set.

Wilkinson is in final escrow for the purchase of the Fillmore and Western Railway Co., the short-line railroad company that runs 42 historic cars and five old locomotives through the citrus orchards and brush-covered ranches of the Santa Clara River Valley.

The company operates weekend scenic rides, along with dinner and mystery theater trains on its 11 miles of track. The company is also a resource for Hollywood filmmakers, who have used company trains as sets for the movies ``Chaplin,'' ``Of Mice and Men'' and ``Cat Ballou.''

Wilkinson, a former film projectionist who retired to become general manager of the company in September, declined to reveal the purchase price. He bought it from an unidentified partnership that has owned the railway for two years.

The purchase was a natural step for Wilkinson, whose childhood fascination for trains was reignited 18 years ago when he unpacked his childhood set to lay around the Christmas tree.

``The bug bit again,'' he said.

After a few years toying with standard scale model trains, Wilkinson graduated to half-inch scale and custom models. Then in 1988, he took a trip out to Barstow for a look at an old Santa Fe caboose.

Before he could think twice, he had the old caboose shipped, hauled and trucked to the back yard of his home in upper Ojai. Pretty soon he bought a second for his brother, a third for a friend and in one fell swoop, 40 cars for a friend creating a caboose hotel.

Since then, Wilkinson has bought and sold more than 50 cars. He owns 13 of his own and keeps them at short-line railroad yards across the country.

Of the eight he owns at the Fillmore yard, his favorite is Business Car 409, a deluxe passenger car built for Santa Fe in 1929. He hopes to locate another steam locomotive for the yard, but he says the company is in no rush to buy.

``We have a good selection of cars out here so I'm not really in the car market,'' he said. ``Of course that could change if one comes along at a good price that I can't resist.''

Now that he's conductor of his own short-line company, Wilkinson says he's taken his hobby about as far along the line as it can go.

``You don't get any bigger from here,'' he said.

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Photo

Photo: (ran in SIMI, SAC and CONEJO editions--color in SIMI and CONEJO) Dave Wilkinson is purchasing the Santa Clarita Valley's Fillmore and Western Railway Co.

Andy Holzman/Special to the Daily News