Collecting trains since he was a child

Collectors will be out in full force at this week’s annual antique show in New Bern.

An added attraction this year is a non-commercial exhibit called “New Bern Collects,” featuring vintage and rare items of local residents.

John Wahnsiedler will be among the collectors, showing a vintage 1918 cast iron train engine and three designer cars that he inherited from his father. The layout includes two early 1900 train station models and a wooden waiting-station platform of that era.

“Those are wood that somebody actually turned on a lathe,” he said. “Today, you’d make them out of plastic.”

Trains were a part of his life growing up in Indiana. He had several relatives including two uncles who worked for the railroad. He never had an inclination for that type work, but he did enjoy collecting the replicas.

He carried them with him throughout his life, and began adding cars, trucks and other vehicles to his collection in the 1970s.

“Some guys collect door knobs and match-book covers,” he said. “This collecting thing takes a different turn, and maybe it is based on a collection you had as a kid or maybe a relative or a parent had.”

Thursday’s showing at the New Bern Preservation Foundation preview party at the Riverfront Convention Center will be his first venture into public display of his hobby.

“I think there is enough interest in antiques,” he said. “It will be interesting to see what kind of interest people have.”

His father’s train survived a flood during his childhood. One of his uncles, who worked for the Louisville & Nashville Railroad, took it home to restore it. When it was later returned to his father, the engine had a new decal – the L&N.

Wahnsiedler worked most of his career as a field representative with Pepsi Cola, before retiring to New Bern in the mid 1990s with his wife Linda.

The couple moved into a house in a country subdivision near New Bern. He had a building constructed in his back yard just for his “toys.” It’s filled with trains, cars, trucks and even a few airplanes. There is a working railroad layout on a centerpiece table, and another train that makes its way around a shelf near the ceiling.

His love of trains dates to his childhood, when he built a layout on the second floor of the family home.

“It was almost 12-foot square,” he recalled. The landscape included houses and buildings made from card stock and tin. Some were from kits and others were handmade.

He attributes his fascination with trains to a simpler lifestyle.

“Back in those days there was no TV, just radio. That was it,” he said. “We didn’t have all the distractions.”

He had Lionel trains, which he still has, along with his father’s set, made by the Ives Company.

He finally dismantled his train layout in high school.

“I took it down and packed it all away,” he recalled. “Once you got in high school, then, of course, the game changed somewhat. Your interests went to cars and once in a while you’d cast your eye over on one of the girls. And then you’re studying hard so you can get into college.”

John’s father was a manufacturing agent. He followed a similar path to Evansville College, where he majored in business. He was also in Reserve Officer Training. He completed three years of pilot training in the Air Force.

He flew T-33s, which he said are now somewhat like his antique trains.

“Once in awhile you’ll see one on display out in front of an American Legion post,” he said.

He returned home in the late 1950s and went to work. He had a variety of jobs, including industrial relations with Swift meat-packing, and later as a Pepsi distributor.

He joined the parent company and over the years his work took him from New York to South Carolina.

He worked with local dealers on Pepsi products and programs.

He and his wife, Linda, were living in northern Virginia when he retired in the late 1980s. Her work with the federal government and his job with Pepsi had taken them from Syracuse, N.Y., to Long Island, to New Jersey, to Virginia Beach and back to Long Island, and finally to New Bern in the mid 1990s.

Charlie Hall can be reached at 252-635-5667 or chall@freedimenc.com