A serious collector since 1975, Ken is often seen at public appearances dressed in a 1930s style train conductor’s uniform that is far from a gimmick, but rather the cloak of someone who takes his role as collector and teacher very seriously.

Like many enthusiasts, Ken’s love affair with trains started literally from the very beginning. Ken’s father noted in his baby book, ‘Kenneth shows an extreme interest in trains.’

“I guess I had a gene that sparked it,” Ken says. That spark was further ignited by a childhood, neighbor friend whose father owned the Buick dealership in Santa Barbara.  Shortly after his father’s death, his mother purchased the first edition Lionel Trains in which his neighbor was more than willing to share the play value with Ken.

Although Ken went on to become a career Air Force pilot (B52 Bombardier during the Cuba Crisis, Rescue “Jolly Green” pilot in Vietnam), and later a computer programmer at Pentabs in Santa Barbara, and I.S. Manager for Helix Medical in Carpentaria, trains were his constant fascination. Ken’s collection goes far beyond nostalgia for an era gone by. Below the sign that hangs in his living room, “To All Trains” and through the double doors, Ken’s collection is housed in a 1500-square-foot museum with a 14-inch clearance where his model airplanes from 1915 to 1942, seemingly whiz by overhead. 

There are five layouts in the museum, all of which are historically accurate and made entirely of materials available prior to WWII, such as cast iron, right down to the cars, trees, animals, bridges, bicycles, t-pees and three and a half inch people that depict daily life of the era. The layouts that make up Ken’s collection include a large standard gauge layout circa 1932, a 10-inch square O-gauge layout with trains from the ’30s and ’40s, a small O-gauge Christmas layout, and a World War I O-gauge layout complete with a very rare no. 203 armored train set. Overhead a trolley system runs back and forth from New York to Chicago circa 1912.

The layouts are run by computer but can be switched to manual so that Ken can operate on the grid just like a boy would have back in the ’30s. And this kind of accuracy is important to Ken. It is less about the quantity of items, and much more about historical accuracy. Ken wants his layouts to be nothing short of a collection of authentic, historical artifacts.  

Ken got his start building layouts in St. Louis where he was stationed in the military. He worked as one of the designers for a tribute to Standard gauge trains at Oak Knoll Park in St. Louis, an exhibit that set attendance records. A year later he collaborated for a museum in Forest Park, and then another for the St. Louis waterfront. Because of his collaboration on these layouts, and the fact that Ken had to borrow many of the pieces that completed the layouts, he became determined to recreate them in his museum with his own collection.

When Ken moved back to Santa Ynez with his wife Susan, in the mid 1980s, he joined up with the Santa Ynez Humane Society and created a train exhibit for their annual fundraiser. The Humane Society volunteers would dress up as Harvey Girls, who were women of “impeccable character” that served meals in Harvey railway restaurants and played hostess to those traveling on the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe railroad from Chicago to California in the ’20s and ’30s.

Two years ago, Suzie Simpson from the Santa Ynez Valley Historical Museum and Carriage House on Segundo Street asked Ken to create a toy train layout representing the history that the railroads played in the development of the Santa Ynez Valley.  Ken started in October 2005 and worked with several model railroaders from the Central Coast.  In July of 2006 the display went up and filled the entire rotating exhibit area at the museum. “When the time came to take it down the museum kept extending its duration.”

The trains brought such widespread enthusiasm from school field trips that kids were bringing their parents on weekends. That’s when Chris Bashforth, the museum’s director, proposed that Ken build a smaller, permanent display. So far Ken and his colleagues, John Crockett, Ray Wilson and Bob Sponsel, have put in 600 hours on the Mattei’s Tavern layout that displays the train’s southern portion terminating at Los Olivos in 1887. “It’s almost done.” Ken says.

Apart from the historical integrity of Ken’s layouts, there is not surprisingly a hint of bringing back yesteryear. “For the kids that collected those trains and toys back then, they were the absolute creative technology of the era,” Ken says. “Now it’s computers.”

Ken may not entirely reverse that trend, but he has managed over the years to bring back enthusiasm for the more tangible, creative entertainment of trains and layout building in some of our younger generation. For 14 years Ken has been opening his home for what he now calls “Santa Ynez Valley Rail Fest,” an event benefiting the Santa Ynez Valley Humane Society. Not only is the Great Train Room open to the public during Rail Fest, but Ken also opens his permanent large “Santa Ynez Valley Redwood Railway” layout in his backyard. More than 600 feet of rail makes up a course that is 100-feet from end to end, depicting the tracks that run through the San Joaquin Valley. It’s especially fun for Ken to see the kids light up when the trains blow their whistles and chug steam.

When asked about Ken’s most memorable train ride he breaks it down into two experiences. A ride on the Freedom Train from Portland, Ore. to Bend, Ore. along the Columbia and Deschutes rivers in 2002, and a three day trip on the only surviving Daylight in 2004, from Sandpoint, Idaho to Billings, Mo.

Daylight engine 4449 is known as: “The most beautiful train in the world”. It was the first train to debut straight out of the depression, conceived by Angus P. McDonald, then President of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In 1974, the 4449 was transformed into the Bicentennial train, painted in freedom colors that toured around the country to an audience of over 30 million people.

In 2006, a dream came true for Ken when he became certified to run a steam engine out of Ely, Nevada. Becoming a train engineer has never been a desire that superceded collecting, but it was a thrill nonetheless to get behind the throttle of a 1910 steam engine. For the most part he is content as the master of his model trains, firing them up at will and harkening a time when such things were something to be cherished — toys that were built well, and built to last.