15-year-old Ralph Romanello brings the town of ‘Soapton’ to life at the Hinton Railroad Museum
By Jenny Harnish, RealWV
Ralph Romanello built the town of Soapton with tweezers and an X-Acto knife.
It took him about a year. He laid the train tracks and wired the homes with flickering LED bulbs, saving his birthday money for materials.
“You don’t have to be an artist, but it does help if you know what you’re doing,” the fifteen-year-old says, adding that this sort of craftsmanship doesn’t happen overnight. “It does take a lot of research and practice to master this stuff.”
The town of Soapton is a fictitious town from 1860’s rural America right before the Civil War. Passengers wait at the train station while the train whistles around the town. A man carrying a sack of flour walks past the saloon. The farm house was inspired by Romanello’s grandmother and features a corn field, outhouse and a well.
“People call it a super hobby because you got all these – you got electrical work that you got to learn how to do. You got to learn to do painting, carpentry – you got to build the base it sits on. You gotta learn to do scenery, you gotta learn to do track work. There’s a lot of stuff that goes in there” he said.
His interest in model railroading started when he was about seven. His great-grandfather worked as an engineer on the Norfolk Southern and his great-uncle had a model railroad collection. As a child his family would take him to see the “Cincinnati in Motion” display at the Cincinnati History Museum, which is a 2,000 square foot model of historical Cincinnati in 1940 designed by Clarke Dunham. “It’s an amazing experience,” he said. “That’s where I got my lighting inspiration.”
Romanello’s “Town of Soapton” is on display at the Hinton Railroad Museum, where he was able to discuss his creation with other model railroad enthusiasts during the Railroad Days festival in early October. “It’s kind of a forgotten hobby,” he said. “It’s mostly old guys you’ll see doing it. A lot of them were surprised at how good it looked for my age. This stuff takes time to learn.”
Most of his knowledge of the craft comes from magazines such as the Model Railroader and the Railroad Model Craftsman. “A lot of people like to Youtube it, but personally I find I learn best from reading,” he said.
For his next project Romanello has been in touch with multiple historians and the Hinton historical society. His goal is to create a model of the city of Hinton in 1905, which he says was an influential year. “For this I have to scratch build all the structures of the time because you have to find the photographs of every single building. I’ve already found and drawn multiple maps of the area. It’s crazy how much I’ve found out about this town.” he said. “I have to take all these measurements of all of the buildings and scale it down.”
He will work on this project when he has time between school, golf and homework and hopes it will also find its way to the Railroad Museum or beyond. Beyond high school his goal is to get a degree in business or history and become an entrepreneur in the Mountain State.
Much like a real town, Romanello said the Town of Soapton is not finished. “I like to think that on a model railroad the job is never finished. It’s always changing, you always want to tweak it.”
