Here’s the story behind the model trains returning to the Woodstock Square.

The COVID-19 pandemic may have helped revive a declining hobby and the fortunes of one of the last model train and collectible stores in McHenry County, the shop’s owner said.

M.D. Trains in Woodstock hosted a large exhibit of die-cast cars and other vehicle models this past weekend for the city’s annual car show, and owner Matt Drennan said he hopes to continue to expand the shop’s presence at city events, including the upcoming Woodstock Rail Fest in October, which Drennan co-organizes.

The Woodstock Rail Fest, in its third year, will feature more than 25 operating model railroads across various storefronts and outside around the historic Woodstock Square. The event is set for Oct. 8 and 9.

Both the store and the event highlight models connected to Woodstock’s history and fit into the city’s desire to promote the Metra access as key to tourism and development, said Brad Ball, president of the Woodstock Chamber of Commerce.

“The different models they showcase directly relate to our city’s history,” Ball said. “The role of the train station and our stop is super important. And Rail Fest is a definite fall highlight, an event that other communities don’t have.”

M.D. Trains – which began as an online business in 2014 and opened its physical storefront in 2018 – is one of the last model train stores in the county, an industry whose precipitous decline has been documented over the past few decades. But Drennan said he remains optimistic about the ability to keep model hobby culture alive in Woodstock and the region.

“The industry is only as precarious as you let it be,” Drennan said. “It’s still a very well-rounded American hobby.”

The store caters to various levels of hobbyists and also sells die-cast cars and other collectibles, Drennan said.

Drennan’s passion, though, is the trains.

He first became fascinated with trains watching the arrival of the Ringling Brothers Circus Train to Chicago in the early 1980s when he was a kid.

“They would make a circus run down to Chicago from Baraboo,” Drennan said. “My grandmother dragged us down from Crystal Lake to Chicago to see it. But I was more obsessed with the trains than the animals. I drove my mom nuts.”

Drennan said he backed his way into the model train business after “discovering” a giant model train warehouse in Crystal Lake while working as a landscaper in 2001. Drennan began working for Patrick Sullivan, who owned the now-closed St. Albans Station near Crystal Lake. When the Sullivans closed the store, Drennan found partners to launch his own business.

Since then, Drennan has learned nearly everything about train models, their deep history and lore, which spans five main sizes and dozens more subsets, as well as the different kinds of model train enthusiasts.

“You have the typical ‘I’m just a train runner’ buyer,” Drennan said. “There’s the exact-rail gentleman who wants what they see in real life. Or the modeler who wants to design an entire landscape. You have to ask customers a lot of questions.”

Available models span over 150 years of trains and include both appeals to nostalgia but also newer models like the latest AmTrak locomotives and Japanese bullet trains, said Drennan, who has an affinity for trolleys.

“There is always something new some company is making,” Drennan said. “Some model you didn’t know existed, that will surprise you.”

Drennan credits the pandemic for rekindling interest in the model trains and vehicles overall.

“It’s a silver lining to the craziness going on in the world that hobbies got a boost,” Drennan said. “People couldn’t go anywhere so they wanted to play with trains again. So now there was new clientele and water-cooler time became model time.”

Customer Carlos Colon of Lake in the Hills describes himself as a “beginner collector.” He’s been trying to find some of the models that he remembers from when he was a kid.

“My mom got rid of it when I was younger,” Colon said. “But I re-tracked a lot down on Facebook. My daughter loves looking at old stuff and toys I grew up with.”

While many hobbyists and collectors are a bit older like Colon, Drennan said he saw a lot of kids come into the store following the pandemic because “parents were tired of their kids being on screens.”

One of M.D. Trains’ young customers, Franky Heabler, 13, of Woodstock, is also its youngest employee.

One of his favorite things to do is just watch the trains move around the track, turning the speed up and down like a conductor.

“A lot of people come into the store saying, ‘I’ve never seen a store that sells model trains,’ ” Heabler said.