GRAVETTE -- Al Blair, one of the newest members of the Gravette Museum Commission, joined the commission this spring, mainly because of one special interest he has. Blair is an avid model railroader and he was asked to help with restoring the train layout on the Gravette diorama at the museum. About the same time he was asked to become a member of the commission, and he said "yes" to both requests.
Blair helped fellow commissioners John and Jay Mitchael restore some of the buildings and scenery on the diorama and refurbish the Old Town Park area before the museum's "Living on the Railroad" model railroad show on Gravette Day. He has taken some of the train engines to his home for maintenance and lubrication since he has instructions and the equipment to do the job. The time period the diorama depicts is about 1926, and Al and the Mitchaels have been doing research and trying to get engines that are more authentic to the period.
The first-ever model railroad show, held at the museum annex on Aug. 8, was a very popular event. Blair said there was much interest expressed in repeating the event and it is "very likely" the show will be held again.
Blair is a Mississippi native. He moved to Arkansas at the age of 4 when his father, a Methodist minister for 50 years, was assigned to a charge in eastern Arkansas. There, in the little town of Cherry Valley, the Missouri Pacific railroad line ran right by the Blair home. It was then, as a very young boy, that he first fell in love with trains.
The Blair family moved from Arkansas to Missouri and, after Al graduated from high school in Wheaton, Mo., in 1967, he moved to Joplin and enrolled in college at Missouri Southern State University. He enlisted in the Navy in August, 1970, and served until May, 1972. He renewed his interest in trains during his Navy years when he saw an N-scale model train layout in the enlisted men's club in San Diego. When he got out of the service, he began gathering his current collection of train cars.
Blair re-enrolled in college after he came home from the Navy and graduated from MSSU in 1975. He moved to Broken Arrow, Okla., and took a job with Sutherland Lumber Company, helping build the Sutherland yard in Broken Arrow and later working at its lumber yard in west Tulsa. When he left Sutherland, he moved to Grove, Okla., where he worked in sales at Mill Creek Lumber until his retirement in 2011.
Blair continued to accumulate trains over the years, but he says it was only when he met and married his wife, Faye, and moved to Gravette in 1995, that he began to collect them in earnest. His collection of trains now numbers close to 200. He says he probably has at least 50 engines, both N-scale and HO gauge models. He explained their size by saying it takes 160 N-scale train cars to equal a regular size car and 87 HO-scale cars to equal the regular size.
Al's collection has outgrown the room where he first displayed them in the house. He now has a small storage building in the back yard entirely devoted to model trains. A track layout circles the edge of the room and other cars are displayed on shelves on the wall above it.
Although his main involvement on the museum commission has been with working on the train, Blair said he has always been interested in history and enjoyed reading about history. He is also very involved in work at his church. He is a member of the Gravette United Methodist Church, where he maintains its website and is the congregation's lay leader. He is on several committees and is the church's delegate to annual conference. He serves as choir director and sings bass in the church choir.
Blair is a very busy man. He also operates a locksmith service, Al's Locks, and receives many calls from customers who've locked themselves out of their vehicles, broken off a key in a lock or need a lock changed on a door or a vehicle. It's a pretty sure bet he'll never get too busy to play with his trains, though, and patrons of the Gravette Museum will benefit from his interest in model trains.
Community on 09/09/2015