When former President George Bush needed an elegant old train car for his 1992 presidential whistle-stop campaign tour, avid train collector and West Fargo, N.D., business owner Steven “Dirk” Lenthe had just the car.

The Prairie Rose, which he named after the state flower of North Dakota, was built in 1946 and later modified for the president of the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad. The car is currently on display at the Lake Superior Railroad Museum in Duluth, Minn. Lenthe purchased the car in 1985 from a bankruptcy court after it had passed through the hands of several private owners.

“I was born with a rail spike in my hand,” Lenthe said, “Which made it difficult for my mother.”

Lenthe is one of a select group of people who collect full-size train cars. On the other side of the spectrum are those who collect smaller scale model trains. Althought the two groups of collectors have different budgets for their collections, their passion for trains is still the same.

About 25 years ago, Lenthe got started in collecting full-sized cars. Back in February of 1980, Lenthe was heading to a miniature train convention in St. Paul when he decided to stop at the rail scrap yard in Brainerd, Minn.

He ended up purchasing a retired caboose for $2,500 from the Burlington Northern Railway. Once Lenthe purchased his first caboose, he needed a place to put it. Outside his business he laid down tracks to store his new obsession.

If you pass by Lenthe’s business, the side and rear look like an old rail yard. His collection, which has surpassed 20 pieces, includes tankers, boxcars, passenger cars and a 1957 California Zephyr private car.

He also has other pieces around the community. He owns a passenger car in front of the old Fargo (N.D.) Depot and he helped the Great Northern, a restaurant in downtown Fargo, restore the boxcar that sits in front of the restaurant. Before the Great Northern received the boxcar, Lenthe owned it. The car was actually a sleeping car that was transformed into a boxcar.

The private cars, which Lenthe said are now called “Iron Mistresses,” can cost anywhere from $125,000 to $1 million and the Prairie Rose falls in the lower half. Lenthe’s private car, the Silver Lookout, was retired in 1980 and purchased by Carl Weiffenbach in May 1981. The car was later sold to Lenthe in 1990.

Although Lenthe would not comment on the cost of the Silver Lookout, he said that a Milwaukee restoration company said that it would cost around $400,000 to restore the car. After hearing this, Lenthe decided that he would restore the car himself. So, he built a warehouse, equipped with railroad tracks, where he can fix up his car without worry of vandals or rain. Once his private car is finished, Lenthe said that it could be attached to the back of an Amtrak train and pulled wherever Amtrak goes.

The company that built the car the Chicago, Burlington & Quincy Railroad Co., was founded in 1849 by an Aurora, Illinois businessman and called the Aurora Branch Railroad. Besides being a 1:1 scale collector, Lenthe is also a lifetime member of the model railroad club at Bonanzaville in West Fargo, and was once a member of the American Association of Private Railcar Owners.

Full-size collectors are a small, unique group. However, miniature train collectors can be found almost anywhere.

Richard Pemble, a biology professor at Minnesota State University Moorhead, has been a collector of miniature Lionel trains since he was 10 years old. Pemble got his first Lionel train set back in 1951 for Christmas.

The Lionel Company was founded in 1900, and over the course of the next 50 years, the company released many items including steam engines, bridges, passenger trains and even coal elevators.

Pemble said that what makes Lionel so great is that they make noise and things move. For example, people come out of stores, dogs bark and the trains smoke.

Also, they last a lifetime. Pemble said that he could easily fix a train if something is wrong with it. During Christmas time, Pemble still sets up his Lionel set around the Christmas tree. “Some nights I go home and put on a tape of old railroad songs, turn the lights off, turn the train set on and drink a glass of wine,” Pemble added.

“I just sent a train to my six year old grandson for Christmas,” Pemble added.

For Pemble, Lionel trains are not an investment but, to the contrary, they are a passion. He still goes to flee markets and conventions and even has a few trains in his office at Minnesota State University Moorhead.

"When I get bored, I can look over there (pointing to the trains that sit on a shelf) and see what I have waiting at home,” Pemble said. Pemble’s oldest set is from 1925, which was a Christmas gift his dad got when he was 12 from Pemble’s grandfather.

Pemble even has a few railroad memorabilia. His little collection includes signs, flags, hard hats and old kerosene lamps. There are some nights when Pemble and his granddaughter take a lit kerosene lamp and go walking down by the Red River near his house.

Although Lenthe and Pemble have two completely different kinds of train collections, they have one thing in common, they both love trains.