Every holiday season, several trains ride the rails at Ellicott City's B&O; Railroad Station Museum.

They just happen to be very small.

Each winter for at least 14 years, the museum at the United States' oldest railroad station has displayed a model railroad and town, complete with scenery, buildings and people.

"This really draws the families," said Lisa Mason-Chaney, the museum director. There is a scale model of the railroad between Baltimore and Ellicott City on permanent display, but the holiday exhibit offers fun touches and a new design each year.

Mason-Chaney said the event is an important fund-raiser for the museum that attracts thousands of visitors between Thanksgiving and the end of January.

For the builders, it is a chance to enjoy their hobby on a grand scale.

Many volunteers pitch in to create the display, but Tom Sellars, Larry Harrington and Frank Vacek, all members of the Baltimore-area Wednesday Night Train Club, have led the way for the past few years.

Sellars, 51, of Catonsville works in the facilities department of the B&O; Railroad Museum in Baltimore. He has been volunteering hundreds of hours each year to build the Ellicott City display since it began.

"I don't want to say I'm obsessed," he said, "but ... everyone in this hobby is."

The 25 members of the train club have helped build model railroads throughout the area this season, including one of several new holiday train displays at the Baltimore museum.

This year, the Ellicott City workers started with the framework in September and worked Fridays through Mondays to Thanksgiving, sometimes until early morning.

They built a platform to hold the 18-foot-by-15-foot display and then made the scenery out of foam and papier-mache. This year, the layout includes one low mountain with tunnels and a larger mountain with a looping track inside and holes to show the trains whizzing by.

To create the magic of a model train, "it needs to disappear," said Harrington, of Kingsville. "When [one train] goes into the mountain, your eye catches another one. It looks real that way."

"Last year, we had a single mountain," said Vacek, 62, of Ellicott City, but people could not see enough of the train as it made its 90-second journey to the top. "We broke it up this year to make it more visible."

The builders added trees from hobby shops and bits of greenery found outside. Nine trains, including a trolley, were set up to run through the scene.

Houses and shops, tiny figures, stoplights, railroad crossing, cars and animals add to the atmosphere. The display is not a scale model, but an opportunity to show off festive miniatures of all types, Sellars said.

The museum owns most of the items, including track, trains and buildings. New pieces are added regularly.

"I think [visitors] are coming to see the changes," said Vacek, who works at Williams Electric Trains in Columbia. "We try to outdo ourselves every year."

"I like it a lot because not every museum has a cliff ... and some only have one train," said Kathleen Garman, 8, of Glenwood.

She was in Ellicott City last weekend with her father, Bob, and her brother, Daniel, 10. Daniel liked the rotating carousel and the tower with a tiny Santa and sleigh flying around the top.

"We come here every year," said Bob Garman, who, with his wife, Heidi, is a museum supporter.

Harrington, who also works at Williams Electric Trains, remembers lots of families having train displays at Christmastime when he was growing up. He said he and his father used to put models together.

"In the Baltimore area, there has always been a tradition of holiday layouts," he said, adding that it is more common on the East Coast than elsewhere in the country.

This year has been relatively problem-free, but the builders are always on the lookout for a derailment or other mishap.

"One year, a guy came downstairs and said, 'I don't think it's the way it's supposed to be, but your train is on fire,'" said Tom Sellars, who happened to be visiting the museum at the time. He went to look and found a train had indeed jumped the track.

"I try to come by as much as I can to make sure everything is OK," said Sellars. "That way I avoid a phone call when I get home."

The B&O; Railroad Station Museum holiday train exhibit, 2711 Maryland Ave., is open Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays until Jan. 26 and every day between Monday and Jan. 3, except Christmas and New Year's Day. Information and prices: 410-461-1944, or www. ecbo.org.