Hidden deep among the oak and eucalyptus trees in rural Arroyo Grande is a Central Coast treasure that sits in Karl Hovanitz's backyard on Halcyon Road.

Locomotive aficionados consider it a haven for their hobby and share it with local outsiders who are none the wiser.

“What surprises people when they come here is realizing that this is here,” said Keith Hatfield, miniature train operator.

Its element of surprise caught more than 200 people Saturday at the 8th annual Choo-Chew fund-raiser at Bitter Creek Western Live Stream Railroad, a flattened hill grade on the Nipomo Mesa.

Adults who paid $12 and $6 for children got passage to unlimited rides and a barbecue lunch serviced by the Santa Maria Valley Railway Historical Museum. Proceeds will go toward the museum's expenses.

Hatfield says children often enjoy it more so because it is the closest thing on the coast that resembles Disneyland.

It's two-plus miles of scaled-down railroad that twists and turns and dives between trees, tunnels and doll-size buildings.

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“It's not just a big circle,” says Hatfield, addressing a common misinterpretation of the park, which has neither regular operation hours nor resembles a private club.

“It's one of the few premier backyard railroads in the U.S.,” said Hatfield, adding that others are less intricate than this one.

When it opens on special occasions, like Saturday, it's run by a cross section of volunteers with different backgrounds - psychiatrists, nurses, doctors, engineers and so forth.

Hatfield, a retired postmaster from Santa Maria, is the only full-time employee who invests at least eight hours each day repairing, building or maintaining the park where miniature train building is taken to the next level.

“We run it the same way real trains are run, using hand signals and lights,” said Hovanitz, owner of the 10-acre yard that keeps expanding every year.

Aficionados from all over California bring their own home-built trains - some cost in the $100,000s - depending on how authentic they want to keep it, he said.

There could be 18 to 20 trains at any one time. They run on hand-built engines using internal combustion, battery power, solar power or simply with a lawn mower engine.

The trains can travel at 32 mph in Choo-Chew universe, but at a 1/8 scale it's about 4.5 mph, Hatfield said. It lends for a 13-minute ride through railroad evolution of more than 50 years.

It's an experience Hatfield says stays with people and beckons them back.

Arroyo Grande native Joe Echavarria, 46, took his son Seth, 4, and his friends' son, Sami, 4, for what appeared to be a second run through the track, which he first saw on the SMVRHM Web site.

“Seeing it on a computer is one thing,” Echavarria said. “But to see it in real life is totally different.”

For more information about the railway, visit www.smvrhm.org.

Luis Gomez can be reached at 739-2218, or lgomez@santamariatimes.com

Oct. 1, 2006