PHOTOGRAPHY BY CHRISTOPHER IVEY
S
orne people might think
Farmington Hills resident
Brian Golden is a little loco.
They'd be right. Golden, a sales-
man for Vitex low voltage systems,
has been crazy about model trains
since he received his first train set
at age 8. It was an American Flyer
train that his father set up for him,
and after the first loop, he wanted
to see what else it could do.
Eager to create his own layout,
Golden began modeling, making
new trains from kits and from
scratch, and adding the landscape
and buildings around the tracks.
Married to his high school sweet-
heart, Chriss, and the father of
I 8 • NOVEMBER 2001 • STYLE AT THE .1N
grown twin boys, Golden has estab-
lished train sets and layouts in
every home they have lived in.
"I was given a portion of the
basement when we moved here,"
says Golden. "It's a never-ending
hobby, because it grows and
changes." Golden finds he works
on it for extended periods of time,
and then lets it rest for awhile. He
says it is the kind of hobby that is
easy to just pick up anytime.
Golden's new passion is his his-
torically accurate re-creation of an
interurban electric trolley line that
ran from Detroit to Pontiac, along
what is now Orchard Lake Road.
His research led him to self-publish
Farmington
Junction: A.
Trolley Histoiy,
available at loca
bookstores.
"Something •
sparked inside
of me," he says.
"All along I had
been modeling
make-believe.
This was an oppdrtUnity to model a
real location. I became a historian
to model accurately."
Farmington Junction, the trolley
line, and the towns of 'West
Bloomfield, Farmington Hills and
Northville, are in the early stages of
oisonim
re-creation in Golden's basement.
He carefully crafts each piece
based on century-old photographs.
Eventually, the West Bloomfield
portion will be on display at the
West Bloomfield Historical
Niluseum. Farmington will display