Inside, the top floor of the Andersens’ home is a mosaic of Old West provincial décor. Relics romanticizing the era of cowboys and Indians are tacked to the walls and occupy space on every flat surface. The house’s deeper interiors reveal rooms entirely overrun with parts used to create miniature models, the couple’s favorite shared pastime.
“We’ve sort of turned the house into a railroad,” said Julie Andersen, contemplating the number of rooms in her house she and her husband devote to their vocation.
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But it doesn’t stop there. Their downstairs kitchen is a workshop for tracing and molding faces of tiny structures. They morphed the master bathroom into a spray paint chamber. They assemble diorama kits in a small room between the master bathroom and master bedroom. And their garage holds not cars but a table saw. It’s their woodshop.
The rustic adobes and desert landscapes native to the southwest provide a constant source of inspiration for their creations. However, Tom Andersen, a 52-year Coastside resident, has in mind to miniaturize Romeo Pier and Barbara’s Fish Trap.
“They seem, to me, the essence of what’s picturesque about the harbor – the most iconic,” he said.
With some meticulous assembly, the materials scattered around the Andersens’ home constitute a dynamic mini-reality, the kind that imbues model train sets with historic and cultural context, down to the last weathered brick. The tools of the trade include tweezers, scalpels, magnifying glasses, about 15 kinds of adhesives and an assortment of precise power tools, including a drill press accurate to less than one-thousandth of an inch.
“It definitely takes a mindset of hunkering down,” said Tom Andersen, gazing over one of his models. Andersen is practiced with tools, having owned El Granada Hardware from 1976 until 2002. He also ran Tom’s Market and Deli in Montara and Princeton Market and Deli in Princeton in the 1970s.
Last year, interested in structures in the southwest style that weren’t commercially available, the Andersens designed some of their own. Months later they spun their shared passion into a viable profession, establishing their home as an outlet for unique designs. In the world of diorama, they specialize in homemade kits of classic train roundhouses and traditional New Mexican-style buildings.
Bob Brown is intimately attuned to that world. As publisher and editor of Narrow Gauge and Shortline Gazette, a bi-monthly magazine for the model train enthusiast, the Los Altos aficionado effectively helps steer the direction of the hobby on a global scale.
The Andersens advertise in the Gazette, and Brown has written reviews of the Andersens’ work.
Brown calls Tom Andersen a “rising star” in the industry. Brown deplores the modern approach to kit-making, which renders plastic, laser cut materials that often come pre-assembled. He appreciates Andersen’s old school approach to kit-making.
“He’s unique, in that he’s appealing to the craftsman – to the person who really wants to put (models) together piece by piece,” Brown said.
The Andersens’ customers receive kits of the raw materials, and they’re required to cut, fit, weather, stain and glue them together. Rather than submit to cookie cutter approach, the Andersens revel in provoking creativity and resourcefulness.
“It’s a more soulful and artistic expression of modeling,” Tom Andersen said. “It’s good to have models that are capturing the funky essence of this semi-decrepit stuff.”
Tom Andersen’s nostalgia stems from his early years unloading canvas sacs of mail off the trains near his grandparents’ home in Indiana. In middle school on the Coastside, he built toy catapults and ships out of plywood and blew them up with cherry bombs. Julie Andersen loves to paint, and has an affinity for the sights and landscapes of the southwest.
U.S. Bank in Half Moon Bay showcased one of the Andersens’ latest displays in its lobby for a two-week exhibition that ended Saturday. It was the first such endeavor for the Andersens, though they need not advertise locally to push their products.
A stack of orders for their signature kits awaited the Andersens upon their return from the annual National Narrow Gauge Convention in Colorado this fall. The sales reaffirm their talents, but the workload stands between them and their ambition to tackle Colorado miner’s cabins. Tom Andersen said they don’t plan on quitting any time soon, so it’s only a matter of time before they branch out.
“But we’re not working on that now,” Tom Andersen said. “We’re working on catching up.”
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