It isn't a train theme park, but every year hundreds of locomotive aficionados are drawn to Karl Hovanitz's backyard in rural Arroyo Grande on Halcyon Road for a number of reasons.

For some it's the miniature train engines choo-chooing through tunnels. For others it's the way hundreds of feet of miniature rail twist and turn through scaled down bridges and towns. Still others savor the little details that give life to Hovanitz's 10-acre scaled-down train universe.

“When I first saw this seven years ago, I had to get involved,” said Kevin O'Roark, 53, owner of one small-scale train among the dozens gathered Saturday. “I love this. I love talking to people about trains.”

About twice every year, the hidden “Bitter Creek Western Railroad” opens to the public - mostly young couples and children attend - as a fundraiser for the Santa Maria Valley Railway Historical Museum. Some 200 people were expected to go Saturday.

This weekend's event, the second of the year, continued on despite the sudden death of one of the railway museum's co-founders, Phil Goble of Santa Maria. Goble died of a heart attack while driving to the event that morning.

“We know that because he looked forward to this every year, he would want us to go on with it,” said Ed Couch, a museum board member.

Now on its 10th run, the “Choo Chew Saturday” has been called “successful” at generating enough funds to “pretty much cover our operating budget,” said Dan Alves, museum president.

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Currently, the museum staff is looking to purchase one of the first locomotives of the Santa Maria Valley, he said. A survivor of the World War II scrap drive for war efforts, the black steam engine, “Union Sugar #1,” sits as a display at a museum in Jamestown.

Alves said it will cost $25,000 to bring it to the Santa Maria Valley by next summer. A separate fundraiser has generated $4,500 as of Saturday.

It's been a goal of the museum to maintain a historical perspective of the Santa Maria Valley's through trains, he said. But now its main fundraising event has created enough buzz to be an attraction of its own.

Newcomers express surprise upon getting a glimpse of the small train engines - some no taller than 2 feet high and 5 feet long - as they travel in and out of tunnels at 3 mph.

Two Arroyo Grande brothers, Anthony Silva, 17, and Jake Silva, 6, were amazed upon entering the gates.

“This is something else,” Silva said. “I've been to a train station before but this is something else.”

The younger Silva said the train engines resemble his own train toys, but the 1/8 scale versions are anything but plastic and metal. They are real metal with real engines creating real combustion.

O'Roark says what's most intriguing is the backyard itself.

“Some people work on the electric signs, other work on trimming the trees,” said O'Roark. Many different people with different backgrounds contribute in their own ways, he added.

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

September 23, 2007