Model Train Collector Goes Full Steam Ahead
Chasing your dreams as you age enriches your life.
As a 5-year-old kid, Kim Krieger watched trains chug past his Sheffield Lake house, which was a few blocks away from the Nickel Plate railroad. He would run down the street and look, counting the smoke plumes, figuring out how many double head steam engines were running.
“My earliest memories are the trains going,” says the 69-year-old. “Walking to school, discussing steam versus diesel — I loved it.”
He dreamt of someday running a real steam engine, ever since he saw the men leaning out the window, waving to him as the trains flew by. “I always wanted to be an engineer,” he says.
He never stopped wanting that, and at 66 years old, he finally got behind the throttle of a steam engine.
On Track
Around the holidays, Krieger, his friends and his neighbors looked forward to paging through a toy catalog, looking at pictures of model trains. “Trains just fascinate me,” he says. “They’re big, powerful.”
When he was 6, he got one of those model trains — a Mark’s model that ran in a figure eight, recorded in some family home videos. His model train kept him interested, even when the steam engines on the Nickel Plate railroad stopped running that same year. He went to see them one last time.
“We were the first ones at the crossing,” he says.
He later followed a different track and majored in electrical engineering at the Indiana Institute of Technology in Fort Wayne. He worked for Ohio Edison and moved to Akron in 1981. He managed transmission planning for light poles, so he never worked with trains, but they remained on his mind.
Over the years, he rode in passenger cars of steam engines multiple times, taking trips like Orrville to Pittsburgh and Fairlawn to Bellevue. When he retired in 2015, his dream of running a train never went away.
All Aboard
After six decades of collecting model trains, Krieger finally got to run a real one.
Even better, it was one of the steam engines he used to watch run by his house when he was a kid — a 765 engine from the Nickel Plate railroad.
In 2018, he discovered an opportunity to run that steam engine through his Fort Wayne Historical Society membership. He didn’t think twice — he jumped at the chance. He was the fourth person to sign up.
The morning of his special day, he was so excited to arrive at Cuyahoga Valley Scenic Railroad’s Fitzwater Maintenance Yard. When it was his turn, he climbed into the cab, sat in the engineer’s seat and rested his arm on the armrest near the window like a seasoned pro, reveling in the moment.
“My grin is like here to here,” he says. “You don’t even care if it moves.”
The train’s regular engineer was sitting right behind him, and he explained what all of the levers and valves do, along with the most important part — how to get the train running.
Krieger gently pulled the throttle back one notch at a time, heart racing, and cranked the steam engine up to 22 mph.
“You look at the ground, and we start to move,” he says. “A steam engine, it’s a living breathing thing. … You can hear them, Chug, chug, chug, chug.”
He ran the train about 3 miles out from the maintenance yard, through the national park, then back. Riding through the woods, he didn’t see any people, but he did see some wildlife, including a bald eagle. “You can blow the whistle as much as you want,” he adds.
“Now I can say I actually ran an engine,” he says. “I’m a real engineer.”
Still Chugging
Running the steam engine was such a thrill that Krieger signed up to do it again in 2019 and this past September. Accomplishing this goal didn’t make him complacent though. He has continued exploring his passion for trains, in as many ways as possible.
His collection of model trains has grown to over 400 engines that run on tracks set up on 25 by 75 feet of tables in his basement, and he’s still working to perfect the tracks. The models are more technologically advanced than the one he got all those years ago, but he has some classic models too.
“It’s remarkable,” he says. “My friends have all gotten into this.”
Those friends are people he knows from the Lorain County Model Railroad Association, who he meets with each month, his love for trains unwavering. Similar to when he was a kid, he still sometimes rushes out to see the trains running along the Wheeling and Lake Erie Railway behind his Akron house, taking photos and waving to the engineer.
He’s still reaching for new goals, and he recommends people do the same.
“Everything is possible,” he says, “so I would go after my dream, as hard as you could, even if you have to wait till you’re 66 to do it.”
He hopes to someday finish his model train table, wants to go to a train museum in Nevada and has plans to sign up to run the steam engine for as many years as he can, continuing to live out that dream he had as a young boy.
“It’s an honor to do this,” Krieger says. “It’s something that a lot of people dream about, ever since you had a little toy train going around the Christmas tree.”
Dream On: Striving for goals can help keep you healthy
Aging doesn’t mean you have to stop chasing your dreams.
As adults age, changes happen biologically and cognitively, but they can “flourish into old age,” says Jennifer Tehan Stanley, an associate professor in The University of Akron’s psychology department who teaches in the adult development and aging doctoral program.
“Development doesn’t stop,” she says. “We think of development as happening across the entire span of our lives.”
Tehan Stanley chats about continuing to grow and work toward goals throughout your life.
Define Your Goals: Older adults’ goals may look different than the typical career and family benchmarks of younger people. Instead, they may have goals about new work, volunteering and hobbies.
“We see a lot of creative productivity in late adulthood, from people who become authors or become artists, even just in their sixth or seventh decade,” she says. “Then we have these other examples of individuals who maybe have something like a bucket list.”
If you aren’t sure what to pursue, look back at old hobbies. “Maybe … things you always wanted to have the time to do,” she suggests.
Pursuing a passion contributes to personal growth, environmental mastery and purpose in life, she says. “You are overall feeling better. You have better mental health and well-being,” she says.
Start Working: Tehan Stanley’s mother decided to learn how to play piano in her 60s.
This was brand-new for her, but regular meetings with a teacher helped her stay on track and reach toward goals.
“Some accountability can be a really good way to get into something that you haven’t had a lot of experience with,” Tehan Stanley says.
Why Do It: Pursuing your passion alongside others can also be a way to remain engaged.
One example Tehan Stanley mentions is the intergenerational book club at The University of Akron, which is for undergraduate students and older adults to meet and discuss things they’ve read.
“A group of individuals might be able to encourage or motivate each other,” she says.
A commitment like this can also help you stay socially active, which can have positive long-term effects.
“It actually has been shown to stave off cognitive decline,” she says. “It can also improve physical and mental health.”