AUGUSTA -- The whirling of the model trains echoes off the walls of the lobby of the Maine State Museum.

The sound is like music to Jay Calnan's ears.

"I've always been fascinated by trains," Calnan, a member of the Great Falls Model Railroad Club of Monmouth, said. "Just with how they work, the power, the noise they make."

Calnan, of Lewiston, was one of a handful of model-railroad enthusiasts who had their models on display at the Maine State Museum Friday. The display continues today.

Calnan has built a little town called East Podunk, and it's filled with miniature ceramic buildings, antique cars and tiny people less than half an inch tall.

Across the lobby, Fred Guth and a couple of the Maine 3 Railers Club, an Augusta-based railroad club, ran a Christmas-themed railroad village. A train with wisps of liquid smoke chugs around the village.

"They're therapeutic," Guth said of model trains, as he watched a boxcar-style Christmas train round the bend. "I could have a stressful day at work, and 10 minutes after starting the trains up, the stress would all be gone."

Both Guth and Calnan had an interest in trains since their childhoods.

Calnan, who grew up in Hallowell in post World-War II America, received his first model train, a Lionel, as a Christmas gift in 1947.

He returned to his hobby more than 13 years ago as an adult when he took his two nephews to a train show on a "rainy day at Sugarloaf when there wasn't much else to do."

Calnan signed up to take a class in building model railroads and joined the Great Falls club.

Guth also had trains as a boy, and bought them for his own children. A decade ago, he said, "The wife told me, 'You need to get a hobby.' Well, that opened Pandora's box."

Like Calnan, the display Guth worked on also showcased intricate miniatures of a town and people. The display even included two Augusta police squad cars, right down to the intricate police insignia on the doors. On one side of the display, a young boy watched in fascination as a motorized garage door flipped up and down to reveal a tiny orange Volkswagen Beetle.

"You never stop collecting," Guth said of the extras.

The displays will be open for public viewing today, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. at the Maine State Museum.