Sam Delauter's handiwork isn't finished just yet.
To the untrained eye glancing over his model train display at the Kanawha Valley Railroad Association's show, the display looks complete.
"Anybody can go and have trains, but to really make it look realistic and to bring it all together, it's a combination of scenery and the train cars," Delauter, 32, of Hurricane, said.
Delauter's project, and the work of many other train enthusiasts, is on display this weekend at the KVRA's annual train show at the lodge in Coonskin Park. The show continues today from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m.
At the show, model train enthusiasts get the chance to show displays they have built in the past year.
In the coming months, Delauter will continue spending hours every week perfecting his display by adding more trees here and a few brushes of paint there.
"When I was a kid, my great-grandpa on my mom's side had built a small layout for me, and then my mom's father built another one," Delauter said. "I've always had them around growing up."
Joe Horter, the secretary of the Railroad Association and the chairman of the committee that plans the show every year, said the train show helps spread the group's hobby to a wider range of people.
"This is an annual show we do, and the purpose of it is to show layouts other than what's at our club," Horter said. "It also allows us to bring in train vendors of new and used model railroad equipment and give people a chance to purchase it and maybe not go to a hobby shop."
At this year's show, the group unveiled a new trail layout not yet seen by the public. It's a massive circular display about 20 feet long. The layout has eight modular pieces that can be assembled and disassembled fairly quickly, and Horter said the group hopes to show the display at state and regional model train shows when it's finished.
How long has the group worked on the display?
"I couldn't even guess," Horter said. "To be honest, we started with it about a year and a half ago, and we only worked on it when we had train club meetings, which is every Sunday."
The group has been invited to shows in many different places around the state, but Horter said his goal is to ultimately bring the display to some public and well-attended event like the State Fair of West Virginia.
"Like most people, I started as a child," Horter said. "Of course you give it up as you go through high school and college and all, then when my boys were born, it was just something I pulled out of the attic and rekindled my interest."
Delauter has wanted to complete his own display, but that was hard considering how massive the layouts can become.
Not only would it be impossible for him to tackle such a large project on his own, he'd have to rent some sort of trailer to haul his pieces around to different train shows. Even some of the smaller displays, ones 8 to 9 feet across, can be difficult to transport.
Delauter's display was measured out perfectly to fit in the backseat of his Toyota Camry. It's a lightweight display he can pick up with just one arm.
The frame of Delauter's display was built about two years ago, but he left it sitting in a closet for about a year without doing much work on it. Once he really started to work on the project, he said he would some days spend six to eight hours perfecting the display's fine details.
"At shows people will say, 'I'd love to build a layout, but I live in a two-bedroom apartment. I can't,' " Delauter said. "Well I built the benchwork in my garage and any painting or weathering, too. Minus that, I did the rest of it in my bedroom. It's portable, you can take it anywhere."
Admission is $4 and children 12 and under get in free.
Reach Jake Jarvis at 304-348-7939, jake.jarvis@wvgazettemail.com, Facebook.com/newsroomjake or follow @NewsroomJake on Twitter.