We’ve always said Grandma and Grandpa lived in Centerburg, Ohio, but truth is, they lived a few miles outside of the tiny town. Actually, you drive through another tiny community called Rich Hill, Ohio, which amounts to a crossroads, several houses, and a lot of memories, on the way to Centerburg. It was this little village where Dad and I met a pretty cool fellow named Robert Comstock.
Let me back up and set the stage. We were planning our trip last November (’23) and a visit with Erica and Justin Tiega, who live in the mansion log home across the road from “The Farm”. The last time we were there we spoke of a small scale railroad we could see weaving through a wooded area that was near the old railroad bed on the edge of Rich Hill. This theme park-scaled track was meticulously designed, engineered, properly graded with a track width of about one foot, maybe a bit more.. You can see around 100 feet of this track running parallel to the road before it tantalizingly veers back into the dense wooded lot. Dad and I both remarked about wanting to see the actual train that ran on that well-maintained miniature railroad grade, but neither of us are the type to just pull up and bang on doors.
It was a week or so before our planned November trip and I receive a text from Miss Erica. She had seen Mr. Comstock out working on the track and pulled in and spoke with him. She told him of our upcoming visit and how we had talked about wanting to see the train. He invited us to stop by and he would give us the grand tour. We were excited to add that stop in our visits.
On the day we drove over we had planned to just visit some graves in the afternoon, then visit Dad’s cousin Jane around 5pm when they would be home. So we decided to visit Mr Comstock first thing instead of graves. It was around 3 pm on a warm, sunny Fall afternoon when we pulled up the drive.
We could see Mr. Comstock out cleaning brush from the tracks. We introduced ourselves and he said he was expecting us. He was a very passionate curator of what amounts to a scale railroad museum he built on his own.
Robert Comstock is an engineer and scientist specializing in forestry. His 11 acre spread is a modest house with planned forest trees and 7 acres of hand-built small-scale railroad tracks and trestles that weave in and out through the property. The engineering and construction are commercial industry standard and beyond. The thought, work, and effort that went into planning, grading, gravel, railroad ties, etc., is quite impressive, all built to a strict personal standard of perfection.
The locomotive was already winterized and in the shed, so we didn’t get to see it run or get to ride it. That is on the agenda come our June visit.
We had an amazing visit with Mr. Comstock, and learned a lot. What started out as an HO-scaled model set in the basement grew to over 7 acres of “train set”. His story is fascinating and I intend to get more footage and his story on film on our next trip over. Of course I will post it here.
Pix are from my camera and Miss Erica’s.