Lara Cooper/Daily News Sharon Burns and her 3-year-old son, Levi, both of Bowling Green, watch as a model train passes by Saturday during the Festival of Trains at the L&N Depot. The festival continues today from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m.

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Amazed children watched Saturday as the large model train went around a double track at the annual Festival of Trains at the L&N Depot.

Grandparents and parents took children throughout the building, showing them a track that used to be a busy stop on the train route from Cincinnati that ended in either New Orleans or Birmingham,. Ala., said Rick Williams, chairman of the Friends of the L&N Depot.

The festival is a chance for the group to showcase improvements made at the facility in the past year, Williams said. This year, that included new paint for the 1911 Louisville & Nashville Railroad presidential office car.

In addition to the model track from the sHOw Modular Train Club of Southern Kentucky, there were also tours of the historic rail cars at the depot and a video on model trains. Children could have their picture taken with Santa Claus.

The festival continues today from 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the depot at 401 Kentucky St. A $2 donation is asked of adults who go on the guided tour of the rail cars.

Each club member built a section of the model track, Williams said, and it now encircles a large portion of the main room at the depot.

“This is about the fifth year we've done the event and it gets a little easier each year,” Williams said. “We do a lot of the same things.”

Friends member Michael Riggs handled the dining car portion of the tour Saturday. The way these cars were designed is fascinating, he said, noting that current restaurant standards were created by the dining cars decades ago.

Joe Crain, a member of sHOw, said he loves to come to these types of events to meet and talk to people about trains. The group has about 35 active members and does four to five shows a year.

“I became interested in trains when I was 2 years old,” he said.

Sometimes there are more older faces looking at the trains than young ones, Crain said, but “I like seeing the faces on the young kids as they enter the building. They get wide-eyed.”

One of those wide-eyed youths was 6-year-old Benjamin Carter of Glasgow, who has adored trains since he was 2 and received a “Thomas the Tank Engine” track from Santa Claus for Christmas, said his mother, Lucretia Carter.

“We come to this every year,” Lucretia Carter said. “He starts asking about it way before the event.”

The family also makes a yearly trip to Louisville, to the train museum, when the Thomas locomotive comes to the area, Lucretia Carter said.

Her son also likes to ride trains, she said - the family took a two-hour ride during a vacation to the Grand Canyon in Arizona.

The Friends are working toward making the depot into a full-scale museum, with a number of permanent exhibits, the archives of the Historic L&N Depot Society, and a national group with members all over the world, Williams said.

Renovation continues on what is planned to be the museum part of the depot, he said, and the Friends are planning for the arrival of a new rail car - a postal carrier. There is already an engine for it and it's being renovated in Evansville, Ind.

“The goal is to make a good tourism destination,” Williams said, adding that nearly all the work at the depot has been completed using private donations.