By Meredith Gardner
meredith.gardner@theindependent.com

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Independent/Barrett Stinson Dressed in train attire, YAP Auction Company ringmen Von Lutz (left) and Steve Power take bids during an auction featuring nearly 2,000 model train rail cars, cabooses, engines and accessories on Saturday. The auction continues today at 1 p.m. in Grand Island. Independent/Barrett Stinson YAP Auction Company ringmen Steve Power and Von Lutz (right) take a bid on Saturday. Independent/Barrett Stinson Sitting with his wife, Emma Huebner, retired engineer Wayne Huebner (right) makes a bid during Saturdayıs auction at YAP Auction Company. Huebner said that he worked on the Union Pacific railroad for 44 years. Click Thumbnails to View

For hours he chugged along, perched on the platform above his audience, changing his tune to the nods and yelps of onlookers.

By mid-afternoon, auctioneer Jerel Ross and his associate, Von Lutz, were done conducting the first part of a model train liquidation, having sold more than 500 lots.

Train enthusiasts and curious onlookers alike were drawn to the YAP Auction Company, 801 W. Anna St., on Saturday morning for day one of a weekend-long model train auction. All of the 2,000 pieces came from a single estate and had been previously piled in a local storage shed.

For the auction, the new engines, rail cars, cabooses and accessories were carefully examined, photographed, logged and laid out on a table, where dozens took a gander before the start of the 10 a.m. auction.

Carefully stored in their original boxes were pieces from Lionel, Rivarossi, Spectrum, Kato, Athearn, Genesis and many other companies.

Ross, who owns YAP Auction Co. with his wife, Kathy, said the weekend auction is the largest one of its kind he has ever hosted. He estimated that by the end of the day Sunday, the entire collection would sell for between $10,000 and $15,000.

More than 100 people stopped by the auction house on Saturday to fill the bleachers, Ross said.

In addition, the auction was held live online through the Web site www.proxibid.com. That allowed thousands of people to browse through the auction's contents from any location in the world.

Opening the auction up to bidders on the Internet meant that all items had starting bids before they even came up to the auction block a definite plus during a liquidation sale, Ross said.

The train auction generated a lot of local interest, he said.

"There's just a lot of collectors," he said, especially in a town so heavily influenced by the railroads running through it.

Doug Sittner of Juniata brought his 10-year-old son, Garrett, to the daylong auction with the hopes of adding to their railroad collection.

"We are train enthusiasts," said Sittner, who has loved trains since he was a little boy and looks forward to passing his collection on to Garrett someday.

"It's fun, and it's something we do together," he said.

Rick Sperlan of Grand Island, a former employee of Union Pacific, also stopped by wearing his UP hat and belt buckle.

Sperlan said he knew the owner of the collection, so the auction has sentimental value. He's also a fourth-generation railroad worker who collects and puts together model train sets to relieve stress.

"This is probably larger than most," he said of the weekend auction.

After blazing through 580 lots, the auction house wrapped up bidding at about 3:15 p.m.

At the end of the day, the item that had received the highest bid was a Lionel-brand Union Pacific engine that sold for $575.

In addition to a twin of that top-seller, some of the estate's more expensive items will be up for bid starting at 1 p.m. today, a day Ross said he expects to chug along even faster than Saturday.