Model railroad manufacturer closing the doors on model railroad club

You know times are tough when even having as knowledgeable landlord as a model railroad manufacturer/distributor isn't enough to keep the eviction notice from your door:

They were snapping photos Thursday night in the back room at the Wm. K. Walthers Inc. headquarters building, old club members and old model railroad enthusiasts, watching as the locomotives rolled down the track, past rail yards crammed with covered hoppers and red tankers, past smoke stacks made of old vacuum cleaner canisters and charcoal-covered cotton, past steep cliffs carved from old acoustic tiles set against a painted sky.

Thirty-two years they worked on this layout, built it by hand — 600 feet of mainline track — refined it, changed it, but never quite finished it.

But now, they're waiting for the final whistle, waiting to take apart the track and shut it all down.

"It was a labor of love," said Bob Sherman, 71, one of the last of the Milwaukee Model Railroad Engineers.

The club, founded in 1947, is down to two members. Walthers, a model railroad equipment firm, needs the space.

It's really a shame that of all possible landlords, Wm. K. Walthers would be the villain in this little drama. Walthers has been one of the longest-surviving firms in the model railroad business (founded in the 1930s, still going strong today). You'd think that Walthers would work to find some way of helping to keep the club alive, but with only two remaining members, it's possible that nothing would be enough to keep the club going.

It's hard to imagine any special interest group as space-sensitive as a model railroad club managing to carry on when membership had fallen that low . . .