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player ready...Wilmette resident Terrie Briggs wondered if she could find a new home for the historic Frazier Thomas model railroad in her basement. After publicity about the railroad, she said she has been overwhelmed by the number of people — at least 24 — reaching out to her, willing to help relocate the set.
That includes a man from Seattle who offered to send a flatbed truck to retrieve it, a woman who wanted the railroad for her 13 grandchildren and a Lake Forest retiree who believes the set could bring smiles to the faces of children hospital patients in his hometown of Pittsburgh, she said.
Briggs, an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University’s School of Education and Social Policy, said that she’s hoping to work with the Lake Forest man. She and the man’s son have spoken, she said, and plan to stay in contact to determine if the logistics of such a move are possible.
“I work with children on literacy issues,” Briggs said. “I was talking with one particular class and I told them about what I have and what I want to do and I said, ‘Here’s my dilemma. I have all these responses, and I still don’t know who to talk to. What do you think?’”
The response was clear.
“Go with the man who would show it to the sick kids,” Briggs said they told her.
Bill Kiesel said Friday he and his father, Robert, hoped to speak further with Briggs over the Memorial Day weekend.
“There’s a lot of pieces of this puzzle to be put together. My dad is 90, so we may not move quickly, but we want to see if something good can happen,” Bill Kiesel said.
Briggs has owned the former Thomas home on Greenwood Avenue for almost 31 years. She decided to seek a new location for the train set because she didn’t want to risk its potential destruction if she moves and sells the property.
The track and its extensive set of miniature stores, railroad stations, mountain hamlets and feedlots was built by Thomas, who died in 1985. He was known to generations of Chicago children as the creator of “Garfield Goose and Friends,” then later became the ringmaster of WGN’s “Bozo’s Circus” show, and the host of the station’s “Family Classics.”
Winnetkan Brad McLane was one of the many who contacted Briggs about the Thomas set. In an email sent to her, McLane said his Sheridan Road home had a large basement that might be able to house the system.
He said he reached out not because of the Frazier Thomas connection — he grew up on the East Coast, and Thomas’s shows were midwestern favorites — but because of his childhood fascination with model trains.
“I was a Lionel and HO train kid. I loved them as a kid and I was always entranced by families who had room for a whole set in their homes,” he said.
Reading of Briggs’ situation was compelling, he said.
While he said he was slightly disappointed not to have been successful with his plea, McLane said he thought the possibility of hospitalized children enjoying the set was a nice idea.
As for Briggs, no matter where the tiny railroad world in her basement ends up, she said it’s been quite a journey she has taken.