Block · one region of the page, as the scanner read it. It may hold a whole story, part of one, several, or an advertisement; stitching blocks into articles is the next step. Text is supplied OCR.
Page 11 · column 1 of 6 · from the scan, no model involved
By LISAG. CURRIE
Rappahannock Newa Staff Writer
Castleton’s Steven Nikolajevic has brought to life his passion for trains and America’s Old West.
“It’s not so much trains but every since I was a young boy, the West has been a passion of mine, a dream,” he said, adding that as a young child of three or four, he and his brother played cowboys and Indians with tiny one-inch figurines in his mother’s flowerboxes in his native Yugoslavia.
Coming to the United States as a young adult, traveling cross-country three times, being influenced by history and Hollywood’s productions, buying his first shiny and sleek powerftil diesel reproduction and his first coal blackened steam reproduction engines, set the stage for the development, after his retirement and permanent move to Rappahannock County, of his own Western territory in the basement of his Castleton home.
“I’m never finished,” he said of his track, adding that his grandchildren and friends and associates enjoy its existance often more than he. “Sometimes I get fed up with it all,” he said half-heartedly with a smile, meaning the room downstairs filled with trains running up plywood hill and down, across bridges of wood and bridges of copper bands, in tunnels and out, over gulleys of gold and through coal mines blackened with soot, beside Indians fighting Indians or Indians fighting calvary.
“There is always something to change or add or rearrange,” he said as he righted a toppled gentleman on a village square, adjusted a spray • painted sumac bloom serving as a tree or showed the details on a tiny . Indian warrior, dressed in wolfskin and racing to the buffalo kill.
“It’s my creation of the old West,” he said, adding that with his track and his old West, often based on historical places and events but altered slightly so his imagination can have full charge of his territory, “I can change history. I can let the Indians win this battle or the southern troops take this battle. ”
An avid Civil War buff, Mr. Nikolajevic moves tiny blue coated sol. diers, pointing to the train unloading more and the grey-breasted troops arriving from the east and west.
His western territory started seven years ago when Mr. Nikolajevic bought the first sleek, shiny . diesel engine.
“Some time later, I bought a old
94.7%