While trying to dust away cranial cobwebs, I brushed through Google News the other day and stopped on a note about a new book to be released mid-month, "Playing With Trains: A Passion Beyond Scale." Over the weekend, a reviewer in the Chicago Sun-Times -- himself a confessed miniature-train fanatic -- featured the book.

Sam Posey, a former Grand Prix (not the Pontiac) driver, has written about a hobby that for years has occupied most of his leisure hours. He has in his basement a mammoth, fully developed layout, 60 feet in length, that he's been working at for 16 years.