Neal's extensive model train network is set up in the basement of his Longmont home.

He has a large collection of trains, some of which are valuable collectors items and says that he treasures each and every train car he owns.

His model railroad network runs on three different gauges of tracks - Standard, “O” and “G” gauges, and it is controlled by a complex system of electrical switching devices, which he and his friends have assembled over the years.

Some of the trains included in his collection are:

A Blue Comet, that runs on both standard gauge and “O” gauge tracks.

He has some Ives Trains, "all collector’s items," in standard and “O” gauge.

He has several Marx trains, which he describes as, “cheap, but good trains - they are metal trains that run on "O" gauge tracks, which were the standard in the 20’s.“

A very special train set Neal is particularly proud of is his President’s Special, manufactured by American Flyer. "It is an electric type engine with three cars and only 12 sets were made. It is a replica of a real train. It is a chrome-plated, metal train. It’s very heavy and it runs fine.”

Also part of his collection is a green Lionel , standard gauge train set, which is a copy of the Milwaukee Passenger Train.

Neal’s Pioneer Zephyr, made by American Flyer is one of only 100 cast aluminum sets ever made. “They were quite the thing - they were brought out when the original Zephyr was introduced in 1934.

He also has a Union Pacific Streamliner, made by Lionel in 1934 and an all-metal, Milwaukee Hiawatha.

His engines represent three different types of locomotives - steam, electric and diesel.

Neal Miller’s trains are equipped with full sound effects, so when a train pulls into a station you hear authentic sounds of each particular engine. "You press a button on the transformer, when the train stops at a station and you hear the conductor give a Station Stop and ‘All Aboard’ and ‘Watch Your Step,’ instructions for people getting on and off the train - and that’s all a lot of fun.”

There are different whistles for steam, diesel and electric engines. Miller likes the steam whistles best, ”They are pleasant, but the most pleasant sounding whistle ever brought out by a railroad was the Union Pacific Big Boy. It had a steamboat whistle sound.”

Miller holds card number five, as a member of the Rocky Mountain Railroad Club, which he joined in the late thirties. The club currently has about 1500 members.

Neal’s hobby also includes railroad photography. He has been taking photographs of trains and has given club members a different train photo each year for the past
52 years.

Neil travels all over the area to photograph trains. He has photographed: The Great Western Railroad, The Colorado and Southern, The Burlington, The Union Pacific, The Santa Fe and the D&RG Narrow Gauge. He has shot both still film and 16mm in both black and white and color.

He shoots with a slow speed film - to enable large blowups of the photos.

His photos have appeared in a number of books and magazines.

Robert Darwin, a California author, published a 400-page hard cover book in April 1988, History of the Union Pacific Railroad in Cheyenne: A Pictorial Odyssey to the Mecca of Steam, which contains 94 - 11 x 14 photos taken by Neal. It is currently available from Amazon.com - used, from $464.28.

Miller said about 400 people a year - mostly parents and children - visit him to see his trains. When youngsters visit, Neal said, he always gives them a, “no good engine to hold - which keeps them from touching his collection."

Sometimes, real railroad people, including engineers, also come to see his collection. And Neal says, “They are fun to show the collection to. They want to see a lot of details.”

Neal has 124 engines - of all different gauges- in his collection.

A real life railroad experience for Neal was when he once got permission to ride the Denver and Rio Grande Western on the Yampa Valley Rail - from Denver to the west portal of the Moffat Tunnel - in the cab, and he took pictures along the way.

He also used to ride the Zephyr from Longmont to Cheyenne and back. He rode it once when it was half hour late coming out of Cheyenne. “It was a regular diesel and that thing would move. When we reached just south of Cheyenne, where the track started to straighten out, we went through Wellington and the engineer blew the whistle at the crossing there - we were going well over 100mph - to make up time. Once in a while you could hear rocks hitting the bottom of the train, because the train was going so fast. It arrived in Longmont, only 10 minutes late. He was moving fast! We had a cloud of dust swirling behind the Zephyr that normally didn’t swirl like that. That was more fun. Compared to the Zephyr, the rest of the trains are just trains.”

Neal remarked about his collection, “It’s fun and it keeps a person busy. There’s always something to do when you have a collection like this.”

Neal enjoys showing off his classic collection of model trains and gets a kick out running the different engines and explaining what they are and how they operate - as he runs them through miniature tunnels, over bridges and around curves, blows their whistles, and brings them into the station, where you hear, “All Aboard!”